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SPECIAL WORK AND PREP.

THE

Ming of Hsrael

BY

MONA CAIRO.

Yesterday, this Day’s madness did prepare
To-morrow s Silence, Triumph or Despair.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL.

1889.

\_All rights reserved.'^ '

^aUant^e

BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON

5^3

a

\j. I

TO

ELIZABETH A. SHARP,

TH/S BOOK
IS

DEDICATED

WITH

k

GRATEFUL AND ADMIRING AFFECTION,

PREFACE.

Much has been said for and against the writing of
novels with a purpose.’^

As well might one argue for and against the finding
of the Philosopher's Stone. The work of fiction
whose motive is not the faithful rendering of an
impression' from without, but the illustration of a
thesis — though that thesis be the corner-stone of
Truth itself — has adopted the form of a novel for
the purposes of an essay, and has no real right to
the name. ' So long as there is true consistency in
the actions and thoughts of the characters, so long
as they act and think because circumstances and
innate impulse leave them no alternative, they can-
not be fitted into exact correspondence with any
view or made into the advocates of any cause. If
the author preserve his literary fidelity, rebellion
among the actors inevitably springs up. Far from
being ' puppets, as they are so often erroneously

PREFACE.

viii

called, they are creatures with a will and a stubborn
personality who often drive the stage-manager to
the brink of despair ; and as for being ready to
point a moral and adorn a tale at his bidding,
they would sooner throw up their parts and leave
him alone on the deserted stage to lament his own
obstinacy and their insubordination.

Human affairs are too complex, motives too many
and too subtle, to allow a small group of persons to
become the exponents of a general principle, however
true. An argument founded on this narrow basis
would be without value,, though it were urged with
the eloquence of a Demosthenes.

Certain selected aspects of a truth may be — indeed
must be — presented to the reader with insistence ;
for the impressions made upon a mind by the facts
of life depend upon the nature of that mind which
emotionally urges upon the neutral vision one fact
rather than another, and thus ends in producing
a more or less selective composition, and not a
photograph.

But this process — entirely purposeless — takes place
in the mind of every one, though he be as innocent
as a babe of any tendency to weave romances ; the
most strictly matter-of-fact person being, indeed, the

PREFACE.

IX

arch-offender as regards deviation from the centre of
general truth. His own faculties and prejudice, in
this case, play the artist, selecting images of reality
which group themselves after a certain inevitable
fashion ; and these represent for him what he is
pleased to call real life, with its morals ” and its
lessons,^^ precisely corresponding, not to existence
itself, but to the judgment and the temper of the
unconscious dramatist, i

The eye only sees that which it brings with it
the power of seeing,^^ whether ^Hhe eye ’^belong to
one who describes his impression or to him who
allows it to be written secretly on his heart. For
in the heart of each man lies a recorded drama,
sternly without purpose, yet more impressive and
inevitable in its teaching than the most purposeful
novel ever written. •

To transcribe this invisible world so that the im-
press becomes revealed, is to write a novel ; good,
bad, or indifferent, as the case may be, but a novel
par excellence, and not an essay.

The writer of fiction has to present, as best he may,
a real impression made upon him, including the effect
of such impulse to the imagination as it may have
given, and of all the art — if art there be — or exercise

X

PREFACE.

of fancy by which the record is faithfully conveyed to
other minds.

To reveal that image with so much skill that the
vividness of the representation is hardly less than that
of the original, is to write a novel well, though even
yet the image itself may not be of sufficient interest to
make its record of extreme value.

These are, according to my view, the conditions
of the novel : first, of its claim to the title at all ;
secondly, of its merit ; and thirdly, of its greatness,
which implies the fulfilment of the other two con-
ditions, while demanding also that the impression
recorded shall be fine enough and striking enough to
appeal to those sympathies in human nature which
are most noble and most generous, as well as to that
mysterious sense of proportion and beauty which holds

relation to the suppressed and ill-treated, but ever-

%

present poetic instincts of mankind.

I have described these unattained ideals of the art
of fiction in order to show as convincingly as pos-
sible that however much this book may be thought
to deal with the question recently so much discussed,
there is no intention on the writer's part to make
it serve a polemical purpose ” or to advocate a

cause.

PREFACE.

XI

Its object is not to contest or to argue, but to
represent. However much it fails, that is its aim.

If anywhere temptation is yielded to and the action
is dragged out of its course in order to serve any
opinion of my own, if anywhere, for that object, a
character is made to think or to speak inconsistently
with himself and his surroundings, therein must be
recognised my want of skill, not my deliberate inten-
tion,— the failure of my design, not its fulfilment.

MONA CAIRO.

INTRODUCTION.

Azrael or Azazel, according to Muhammadan and Jewish
writings, was the Angel of Death, of Fate, of Destruction.
Azazel or Zamiel is the ^Jewish name for this angel. He
separates the soul from the body, and is associated with the
idea of evil and malignant Fate. He has been identified
with Typhon ; his dwelling is in the desert or wilderness
which is the emblem of immeasurable, all-devouring Time.

“Aaron shall cast lots upon two goats, one lot for
Jehovah, and the other for Azazel. And Aaron shall
bring the goat upon which the lot for Jehovah fell, and
offer him for a sin-offering. But the goat on which the
lot for Azazel fell, shall be presented alive before Jehovah,
to make atonement with him, to let him go to Azazel in the
wilderness.’’

“And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities

XIV

INTRODUCTION.

unto a land not inhabited ; and he shall let go the goat
into the wilderness/’

‘‘And he that let go the goat for. the scapegoat shall
wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in water, and after-
wards come into the camp.”

“ And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of
the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the
children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their
sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall
send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilder-

ness.

CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGE

I. MIST . I

II. A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOMUS 6

III. PHILIP DENDRAITH 36

IV. RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES 52

V. BREAKING BOUNDS 62

VI. THE CUSTODIAN OF THE CASTLE 77

VII. MURDER 90

VIII. A SYMPOSIUM 122

IX. ALTERNATIVES . . ' . . . . . . .137

X. ADRIENNE 154

XI. THE SPIDER AND THE FLY I73

XII. .A WORKING HYPOTHESIS I98

XIII. A CRISIS 212

XIV. DECIDED 227

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

CHAPTER I.

MIST.

great stable-yard clock was slowly striking the
^ hour — midnight. Over the park hung a white and

stealthy mist, touched by white and stealthy moonlight.
Great elm-trees loomed through it heavy and still : they
seemed to be waiting for something that never came.

The mist was thick, but one could see through it a large
white house with innumerable majestic windows, very broad
and very high. Even in this dim light it was evident that
everything was falling into decay. Grass grew in the shrub-
beries, and weeds in the gravel-paths ; it was a melancholy,
forsaken old place, closed in, and silent as the grave. The
house stood hushed in the moonlight, with' blinds drawn,
windows closed, — all but one blind and one window on the
first floor, on that side of the house which faced the garden,
and beyond it a steep avenue of elm-trees.

VOL. I.

A

2

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

At that open window a small figure was kneeling ; a dark-
haired little girl, who leant her elbows on the sill and gazed
up the mystic avenue. The line of trees led the eye to the
top of the hill, and there ending, created an unsatisfied
longing to see over the other side. The child peered forth
eagerly into the still, passionless mystery of the night.
Throngs of bewildering thoughts were stirring the little
soul to its depths : — what was it, and whence this strange
world that does not come to an end at the top of the
avenue, at the boundary of the park ? — this world that goes
on and on, field after field, till it comes to the sea, and
then goes on and on again, wave after wave, till it comes

once more to the land, and then ? then the realms of

the air, and the great cloud-regions, and beyond these —
Nothing, a great all-embracing Nothing that will not stop ;
that goes on and on, and still on, till the brain reels at
the thought of it — but it does not stop then ; it never stops,
or would stop, or could stop, even when God sounded
the last trumpet and the worlds shrivelled up in the
flames on the Judgment Day — how, even then, could
it stop ?

Could God Himself order that there should not be that
great thought-confounding Emptiness. The child shuddered
at the impious doubt, but her perplexed little mind stag-

MIST.

3

gered under the weight of the questions that came tumbling
over one another in their haste.

The mystery of her own existence ; — that was a terrible
perplexity to the little metaphysician. Was this being,
this self a reality in this strange, cold region of Nothing-
ness? Was anything real and actual, or was it all a mis-
take, a shadow, a mist which would presently melt again
into the void ?

Yet if there were no reality, whence these thoughts?
The child touched herself tentatively. Yes, she was, she
must be real ; a separate being called Viola Sedley, — with
thoughts of her own, entirely her own, whom nobody
in all this big world quite knew. Viola Sedley ; — she
repeated the name over and over to herself, as if to gain
some clearer conception of her position in relation to
the universe, but the arbitrary name only deepened the
sense of mystery. Am 7, this thought and feeling, Viola
Sedley ? Will the thought that I shall think, and the feeling
that I shall feel to-morrow, be Viola Sedley too ? It seemed
awful to the child to be walking in the midst of “ eternal
verities ” without knowing them ; to be plunged in Infinite
Nothingness, and not understand if it would some day
swallow us up, or if we should be rescued by the living
Thought that seemed to have so true an existence. How

4

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

had Thought prevailed against that Nothingness, risen
out of its heart, if it were not some real thing stronger
than all ?

Voila could not have expressed these questions in words ;
but her ideas, preceding language (though so intimately re-
lated to it), stretched out into regions where she could find
no answer, and where no answer was to be found.

Conceptions of God, Nature, Destiny, were running riot
in the child’s consciousness, her strict religious training
raising questions without giving solutions, and torturing her
with a sense of inconsistency demanding double-faced belief.
The doctrine of eternal punishment had already begun to
haunt this lonely child with its terrors. From long associa-
tion, the gloom of the great park and the giant trees seemed
to her to speak warningly of what was to come. The place
was full of voices and of symbols. The elm avenue led to
the outer world beyond the park, the world where there
was sunshine and a wide horizon, strong winds and liberty.
Here at home a belt of dark trees shut out the far-away
skies, here one seldom felt the open winds ; it was stagnant
and eventless. To go up that avenue and away into the
world had been one of Viola’s most passionate longings
from her earliest childhood. From the summit one could
catch a glimpse of the sea, the wonderful sea that spoke

MIST,

5

and sang all the year long, in winter and summer, through
the warm days and through all the long dark nights —
eternally speaking and prophesying and lamenting. Viola
thought that if only she could reach the sea she would
•not be lonely any more. She would throw herself down
beside it, and it would know everything : all the fear and the
longing, and the love and pity that was in her ; and then the
pain would go, and the waters would creep up to her softly
and tell her not to grieve, and she would fling herself into

the beautiful waves, and then Suddenly the child

stretched out her arms and sank against the window,
passionately sobbing.

Very white and very still was the mist to-night. Even
in high midsummer it might often be seen hanging about
that damp old park, and this was early in the spring, before
the bursting of the leaf.

One might fancy that the mist lay as a curse upon the
place, shrouding all things, chilling all things, bringing to
all things rottenness and decay.

Was there some influence in the atmosphere of that
old house that was like the still, penetrating mist without ? —
something that worked its stealthy way into the heart,
shrouding all things, chilling all things, bringing to all
things rottenness and decay ?

CHAPTER IL

A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOM US.

Viola Sedley, the youngest and the only girl among a
family of boys, was a pale, dark-haired little creature, with
large grey eyes and delicately cut features. People said
that she exactly resembled her mother, but the resem-
blance was only superficial. Mrs. Sedley's hair was smooth
and shining, while Viola’s fell about her massively, for it
was heavy and thick. Mrs. Sedley’s eyes were brown and
quiet; Viola’s had the grey, shifting tint, that marks the
nervous temperament, and the yearning look of a sensitive,
bewildered soul. Her father saw only the likeness between
mother and daughter, and he called the child, in impatient
displeasure, a little Puritan.” He would have preferred
to see her a robust, coarse-fibred creature of his own kind ;
a girl who would have no reserve or sensitiveness or subtle-
ties of feeling. Mrs. Sedley, with her still, dutiful ways
and religious principles, had irritated him from the first
day of her meek reign at the Manor-House, and he was

A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOM US.

7

highly displeased to find that Viola promised to follow-
in her mother’s footsteps.

Mr. Sedley, by nature, was blustering and self-indulgent,
but on the whole well-meaning, with the fatal habit of so
many people who mean well, of getting into debt. His
wife’s tendencies, on the other hand, were ascetic. Her
conscience never let her rest until she had made things as
unpleasant for herself as circumstances would permit, and
by long practice in the art, she had now achieved a ghastly
power of self-suppression. Her reward had been the ap-
proval of her own conscience and the half-contemptuous
approbation of her lord. He regarded her, in the most
literal and simple-minded manner, as his possession, and
Mrs. Sedley piously encouraged him in an idea which she
thought was amply confirmed by the Scriptures.

Happy the religion and happy the society that can
secure beings of Marian Sedley’s type for its worshippers,
for the faith of such people remains as steady under “ con-
spiracies of tempest from without, and tempest from within,”
as it stands beaming with uplifted eyes on days of halcyon
calm. Rooted beyond the farthest wanderings of the
Reason, it lies securely out of reach of any attack that
may be directed against it through that ungracious faculty.

Mrs. Sedley, following the dictates of her creed, had

8

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

spent her life in the performance of what she called her
wifely duty, and this unfailing submissiveness, this meek
and saint-like endurance, had now succeeded in turning a
man originally good-hearted into a creature so selfish, so
thick-headed, and often so brutal, that even his all-enduring
wife used to wonder, at times, if Heaven would give her
grace to bear her heavy cross patiently to the end !

Nature — regardless, as usual, of motives — was taking her
stern revenge upon the woman who had spent her whole
virtuous life in drawing out her husband’s evil nature, and
in stunting what little good there was in him by her per-
petual encouragement of his caprices and her perpetual
self-effacement. Morbidly apt at self-reproach on all other
points, she never even suspected that the wreck of this
man’s life was partly her own doing. She accepted the
consequence of her acts not as their natural punishment,
but as another Heaven-sent trial to be borne without
murmuring.

Among her numerous Heaven-sent trials ” was the
behaviour of her three eldest sons, the first of whom had
been obliged to leave the country after a detected attempt
to cheat at cards. The other two were in the army, living
royally beyond their means, and appearing to derive no
benefit whatever from the heart-rending prayers offered up

A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOMUS,

9

daily, almost hourly, by their anxious mother for their

welfare, temporal and spiritual.

%

There had been many painful scenes at the Manor-House
of late between Mr. Sedley and his sons ; the father refusing
to pay their ever-recurring debts, while the mother prayer-
fully interceded on their behalf. The times were very bad
just now; rents were falling, farms being given up ; if things
went on like this much longer, Mr. Sedley declared, they
would all be in the workhouse I His own debts were
steadily accumulating, but of this he said nothing to his
wife. Viola was not of marriageable age, and therefore
unable as yet to retrieve the family fortunes. Retrench-
ments became necessary, but the burden of these Mrs.
Sedley took first upon her own shoulders, and then laid
small hardships on her daughter, Mr. Sedley being shielded
till he could be shielded no longer.

Miss Gripper, a severe maiden, who lived and did needle-
work in the village, used to remark upon the shabbiness of
Mrs. Sedley’s garments when she appeared, with Viola and
her youngest son Geoffrey, in church every Sunday morning.
Miss Gripper added that when Providence placed people
in a certain position, it expected certain things of them ;
and, in /ler humble opinion, it showed a thankless, not to
say an irreverent, spirit to appear in the Lord’s house

lO

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

Sunday after Sunday in a turned black silk, — and not such
very good quality, to begin with !

Miss Gripper’s feelings were threatened, as time went on,
with greater and greater outrage, for the young men were
going from bad to worse ; yet Mrs. Sedley loved and hoped
on. It was still her sons who made the most irresistible ap-
peal to her motherly affections : the girl, beloved as she was,
must always be prepared to make sacrifices for her brothers.
In order that they should have a college education and
every social advantage, Viola had to go almost without
education at all ; to afford them means to amuse themselves
stylishly, their sister must be stinted of every opportunity
and every pleasure. The child of course accepted this
without question ; her whole training dictated subordi-
nation of self, above all when the welfare of her father or
her brothers was concerned. She absorbed this teaching
readily, for she was her mother’s ardent worshipper, and
promised to be a credit to that exemplary lady.

She seemed, indeed, less bright and happy than a child
ought to be, but then Mrs. Sedley laid more stress on
religious and moral qualities than on mere happiness.
Possibly Viola’s sex made happiness seem unessential ;
for the mother would certainly have been much concerned
had she seen one of her boys wandering about with that

A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOM US,

II

wistful look in his eyes^ that strange accustomed sadness
which she scarcely noticed in her little girl. Yet Mrs.
Sedley anticipated the troubles of her daughter’s future
wdth unspeakable dread. What had a woman to look for
— a dutiful woman such as Viola must be — but sorrow
and pain, increasing as her life’s shadow lengthened on the
dial? If not quite so heart-breaking as her mother’s life
had been,’ Viola’s could not escape the doom that lurks in
the air of this world for all women of her type. Indeed,
for all kinds and conditions what sorrow and lamenta-
tion ! For each type its peculiar miseries, but the cup
for all !

There were times when Mrs. Sedley, forgetting for a
moment the steadiness of her faith, felt that it might be
better if the child were to pass away to another world before
she had tasted the sorrows of this one. But already the
childish heart had swelled with sorrowful emotion ; already
a dim threatening consciousness of the awful solitude of a
human soul drowned in the deeps of life and eternity had
raised a panic within her. She was cursed with that melan-
choly metaphysical consciousness of the Infinite and the
Unknown with which the British mind is usually so entirely
untroubled. Viola, however, was not a persistently gloomy
child When her brother Geoffrey (a boy a couple of years

12

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

her senior) came home for the holidays, she plunged heart
and soul into his occupations, and was as happy as only
children (and possibly angels) know how to be.

Geoffrey was a long-legged, good-hearted schoolboy,
with rosy cheeks, brown eyes, and a mop-like head of fair
hair. He was at Eton, acquiring a mystic thing called
“ tone,” which evinced itself when he came home,“'in lively
practical jokes of a most harassing character, played upon
everybody within reach, without respect for age, sex, or
dignity ; chiefly, however, upon the maids and gardeners,
who might at such times have answered Mr. Mallock’s
question, whether life is worth living, with a unanimous
and gloo'my negative.

The head-gardener, Thomas, whose mowing-machine
had been put out of order, whose tools had been lost
beyond recall, whose watering-pots leaked consistently, was
heard to threaten to speak to Mr. Sedley if this sort of
thing went on much longer. The second gardener, Old
Willum,” as his chief called him, was made of softer stuff,
showing lenience towards the little escapades of youth,
even when Geoffrey took occasion to substitute charlock
for cabbage-seed as soon as the old man’s back was turned,
causing the long-suffering one to sow a fine crop of that
pestiferous weed in the kitchen-garden. “Old Willum,”

A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOM US.

^3

with his rheumatism, his patient industry, his tender old
heart, was incapable of resentment.

Viola had a passionate love and pity for this old man ;
her eyes used to soften at the sound of his voice, at the
sight of his bent figure trundling a wheelbarrow, or digging
up the everlasting weeds in the gravel-terrace before the
house. “ Old Willum,” her mother, and Geoffrey were
the ^beings on whom she expended the treasures of her
affection ; on these, and on Bill Dawkins, a handsome
undipped poodle named in affectionate memory of a
departed under-gardener, who had been a great favourite
with the children.

Bill Dawkins was indeed an enchanting animal, ridicu-
lously intelligent for such a world as this : a creature full
of life and enterprise, true to the core, and devotedly
attached to his little mistress.

He and Geoffrey used to treat her with a certain chival-
rous condescension as “a weaker vessel.” Bill Dawkins,
in his moments of wildest ‘ excitement, would turn and
run back encouragingly to see that Viola was fol-
lowing.

What adventures those three used to have together in
the woods and fields, in the beautiful rambling old gardens
of the Manor-House ! And what intoxication there was

14

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

in this new-found liberty for the closely-watched, closely-
guarded child !

The mere sight of the sunshine pouring down upon the
open midsummer fields, the mere thrill of a bird’s note,
as the three companions set off together upon some wild
ramble, would stir the little heart almost to bursting.

Only now and then in poetry would she find relief
for this pent-up painful rapture, but books of poetry
were not very plentiful at the Manor-House ; besides, Mrs.
Sedley did not think any poet, except Cowper, safe reading
for her daughter.

So there was nothing for it as regards expression but
to run riot with Bill Dawkins over the fields, and to
join in his wild, consciously fruitless chases after starlings,
skylarks, or some old rook, who flapped his glossy wings
in dignified retreat from the presumptuous assailant.

The child’s whole heart went out in love towards the
living creatures around her ; and the sight of suffering
among the least of these would bring hot tears of anguish
to her eyes. Things that she saw in the fields — the
preying of creature upon creature, the torture suffered
and inflicted in the every-day game of life— caused her
many a bitter pang, and induced her to ask questions when
she went home, which Mrs. Sedley found very difficult to

A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOMUS.

15

answer. She generally told Viola that all things were
wisely ordered, and that we must not permit a questioning
spirit to grow up in us, as that would lead to doubt
and sin.

So Viola was silent ; but when next she saw the piteous
terror of a mouse, as it awaits, horror-stricken, the spring
of its captor ; when next she heard the almost human scream
of the hare when its doom overtakes it, she wondered as
painfully as ever at the strange conflict and struggle of
Nature, though she closed her lips and let the problem eat
deeper and deeper into her bewildered soul.

A lake on the park boundary was the favourite haunt
of this happy trio. Here in spring they would watch the
frog-spawn developing into masses of wriggling tadpoles,
finding never-ending interest and joy to be found in watch-
ing these Protean reptiles, who shed their frivolous tails
and appeared suddenly as sedate and decorous young
reptiles, wanting only size to give them that expression
of unfathomable profundity, which in the full-grown frog
seems to hint at wisdom greater than all the wisdom of
the Egyptians.

Viola used to keep some tadpoles in a water-butt behind
one of the sheds in the garden, giving them romantic
names, and secretly hoping that in course of time they

1 6 THE WING OF AZRAEL,

would answer to them. She consulted Thomas on the
subject, but he shook his head with a knowing wink, and
said he didn’t think .tadpoles took, as one might say, much
notice, — not tadpoles in a ordinary way, he didn’t think.

Viola urged that Marmion, the biggest of the tadpoles,
used to swim to meet her when she appeared^ but she
observed that he did the same at the approach of
Thomas, who had absolutely no sympathy with tadpole
nature. To ‘‘Willum,” who showed fondness for the crea-
tures (as was only natural), they paid no special regard;
they wagged their tails at everybody, and showed a
great lack of discriminating power in their ceaseless
exultation.

On the whole, one could enter into closer and more
personal relations with their elder brothers down at the
lake, only that here their vast numbers made strictly
selective friendship a matter of difficulty. On one occa-
sion, when the children were deeply engrossed in trying
to persuade a green and juicy young frog to eat Albert
biscuits, they looked up and beheld a young man standing
beside them laughing, and a little behind him a tall lady,
also laughing.

The children started up in shy alarm.

“ So this is the way you two wild young people amuse

A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOMUS.

17

yourselves/’ said the lady, who was no stranger, but the chil-
dren’s aunt Augusta, one of Mr. Sedley’s sisters, who had
married and settled at Upton, a village about twelve miles
from the Manor-House.

She was an important, self-possessed-looking woman, tall
and thin, ^ith dark eyes, hair, and complexion, a long face,
rather thin lips, and a neat compact brow.

Her face expressed her character pretty accurately.

Harry Lancaster, her present companion, used to say of
her that she had enough will-pow'er to drive a steam-engine,
an unassailable self-confidence, and opinions of cast-iron.

She was an ambitious woman, whose ambitions had been .
gratified by her marriage with Lord Clevedon, a courtly
person of the old school, with whom she had really fallen
in love after a fashion, perhaps because he satisfied her
innate desire for all that is dignified and grandiose.

Harry Lancaster was a slim, boyish-looking, brown-
haired fellow, with a frank humorous face, whose charm
lay chiefly in its expression. His dark bluish-grey eyes
were brimming over with amusement and sympathy, as
he stood with folded arms looking down upon the two
shame-faced children.

“ It seems ages since I saw you, my dears,” said Aunt
Augusta, in her clear self-confident accents. Are you never

VOL. I.

B

i8

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

coming to see me and your cousins again? Percy was
asking after you only this morning, and little Augusta too.
I think I must carry you off with me to-day after lunch, no
matter what your mother says. My good sister-in-law thinks
me too frivolous a person to trust her chicks to/’ she added
to Harry, with a laugh.

“And so you are,” said Harry. “’I have had serious
thoughts of leaving.your hospitable roof because I find your
influence morally deleterious.”

“ Impertinent boy ! And before these children too ! My
dears, you must always put cotton-wool in your ears w^hen
this wficked cousin of mine speaks. He is a very dreadful
young man, I must tell you — the most dreadful thing under
the sun : a Radical ! ”

“ What is a Radical ? ” asked Geoffrey, looking up into the
face of the “ dreadful thing,” which smiled amiably.

“ A creature in the form of a human being, but with the
soul of a demon,” answered Lady Clevedon. “ I don’t knovV
if he feeds upon little children, but he certainly devours
widows’ houses.”

The children stared.

“ After dark,” pursued her Ladyship, “ he becomes
phosphorescent, and emits from his mouth and nostrils
green fire.”

A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOM US.

19

Geoffrey laughed at this in a sceptical manner.

“It's all very well to laugh/' said his aunt, “but you
don't know what a dangerous young man it is ! Let us
stroll back together to the house, and I will try to get your
mother’s permission to take you home with me."

A visit to Clevedon was like a visit to a fairy palace,
and .the children followed their aunt and her talkative
companion across the park, with hearts beating high for
pleasure.

• Mrs. Sedley was inclined, as usual, to find some reason
against their going, but her husband interposed. Through
his sister he hoped some day to find a wealthy husband
for his daughter.

“ Take them, my dear, take them," he said graciously.

The neighbouring estate to that of Lord Clevedon had
just been inherited by a distant relation of the late owner,
who was without sons or nephews, and this new Sir Philip
Dendraith had a young son who would be just the right age
for Viola when they both grew up, and who would also be
one of the most eligible young men in the county.

“ It will do the children a world of good to have a little
outing," said Mr. Sedley cheerfully.

He was a big, thick-set man, with a ruddy face, reddish
hair, and rather bleared light blue eyes. There was a cer-

20

THE WING OF AZRAEH

tain jaimtiness about his manner, and he was a notorious
flirt ; though, as his sister very frankly remarked, ‘^no clever
woman could ever be got to flirt with him; he was not
amusing enough.’’

“ Have you seen anything of your new neighbours ? ”
Mr. Sedley inquired, as the little party sat down to lunch
in the big, dull, old-fashioned dining-room of the Manor-
House.

“Sir Philip Dendraith and his family? No; at least I
have seen Sir Philip and his son at a meet of the Upton
hounds, but I have not yet called on his wife. He is an
appalling creature ; loud, pushing, altogether obnoxious.
It is a sad pity that the main branch of the family died
out ; this man is not fit for the position.”

“And the son?” inquired Mr. Sedley.

“ Ah ! he is of quite a different stamp ; a true Dendraith ;
handsome, polished, keen-witted. He reminds me of that
portrait of Andrew Dendraith at the old castle on the cliff,
the man in the last century who was said to have killed his
wife because he discovered she was in love with another
man.”

“Handsome, then?” said Mr. Sedley.

“Wonderfully handsome,” Lady Clevedon answered.
“ Of course his parents are crazily fond of him.”

A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOM US,

21

“Ah ! I suppose you will call at once at Upton Court.’'

Lady Clevedon shrugged her shoulders.

My instinct is to put off the evil day.”

“Bad habit, putting off!” said Mr. Sedley, sagely, at
which his sister gave a sardonic chuckle. Perhaps she was
thinking of Mr. Sedley’s debts 1

After luncheon the two children were taken, off to the
“Palace of Delight.” Harry Lancaster entertained them
during the twelve miles’ drive with a running stream of fan-
tastic talk. Lady Clevedon sat back in the carriage and
quietly laughed at him, while Harry, on his side, seemed
to be amusing himself in a sort of secret sub-fashion
with the rest of the company, and with the entire situa-
tion.

He was one of those happy people to whom life is
always more or less amusing, and this pleasant sensation be-
came particularly keen when he was visiting his “ baronial
cousin,” as he called her.

Most people were frightened of Lady Clevedon, who was
noted for her powers of satire, but Harry bared his head
to the storm, and its lightnings played about him harmlessly.
She liked his audacity, even when he attacked her most
cherished convictions. With all his boldness and freedom,
he was what she was pleased to call a “gentleman,” a title

22

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

which she bestowed or withheld with a discrimination
sometimes a little arbitrary.

‘‘I wish I knew what you mean by ‘ gentleman/ Harry
said, after some unoffending person had been consigned to
the region of outer darkness, where there are no gentlemen,
but only weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. ‘‘ I
think you are inclined (perhaps w^e all are) to make the
word stand for a certain sublime something which we
mix up in a glow of excitement with qualities purely
social.’^

“ My dear boy, we are not all etymological dictionaries ;
we use words in their ordinary accepted sense, and leave
definitions to — ‘-the Unemployed.’ ”

“ But,” persisted Harry, “ I want to know what is meant
in common parlance by a ^ gentleman.’ ”

“Ask me to express one of the ^ultimate elements’
(which you are always prosily talking about) in terms of
something else,” returned her Ladyship.

“Ah! that’s an idea!” Harry exclaimed joyously. “A
gentleman is a social element ; he can’t be reduced to any
lower terms ; he is among the original bricks of which the
universe is built ; he is fundamental, indestructible, incon-
ceivable, and” — —

“Harry, is nothing sacred to you? Does this horrible

A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOM US.

23

Radicalism sweep away all the traditions that you learnt at
your mother’s knee ? ”

‘‘ Far from it,” said Harry. Although I have no respect
for class, and no reverence for rank, I still realise that the
house of Lancaster stands apart from and above all princi-
palities and powers, and that it is more glorious in its fall
than ever it was in the palmiest days of its prosperity.”

“ You don’t deserve to belong to it ! ” exclaimed Lady
Clevedon. “This virus of democracy has poisoned your
whole system.”

“Democracy — what is democracy?” questioned Harry,
pensively.

“The mi?government of fools by madmen!” she re-
turned.

He smiled. “ ‘ You murder with a definition 1 ’ ”

“ I am sick of the nonsense that people talk now-a-
days, calling themselves ^ advanced,’ ” Lady Clevedon
pursued ; — “ advanced in folly, let me tell them ! Every
shallow idiot with a clapper in his head thinks himself
entitled to get up and make a jangle like any chapel-bell
that whitens one’s hair on Sunday mornings !”

“Use. Mrs. Allen’s hair-restorer,” suggested Harry fri-
volously.

Lady Clevedon’s face changed.

24

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

“Harry/’ she cried impressively, there was a young
man in ancient mythology of very good position, but he
succeeded in rendering himself so obnoxious to the gods
by his inveterate habit of making fun of them, that he at
last got turned out of heaven. That young man’s name
was Momus.”

“Unhappy Momus!” said Harry. “Do you chance to
know any of the fatal jokes by which he lost his place
among the Olympians ? ”

Lady Clevedon laughed.

“ Much use it is to point a moral for your benefit, young
man.”

“ Perhaps he chaffed Jupiter about his love-affairs, by
Jove!”

“ I dare say ; he was a vulgar god. But be good enough
to suit your conversation to these children.”

“ I am sure they are interested in Momus,” said Harry.
“ The question you raise is one of extreme significance, —
is it not so, Viola ? I am sure you feel with me that the
first instance of vulgarity on record is a subject of reflection
for a philosopher.”

“ Harry, Harry ! ”

“ One of the profoundest mysteries of the universe^ my
dear cousin ; the bane of philosophy, the despair of religion,

A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOM US.

25

the insuperable obstacle to the doctrine of the soul’s im-
mortality, and the ”

“ Harry, if you talk any more nonsense I shall stop the
carriage, and leave you ignomlniously on the road.”

“Well, well; — perhaps the day will yet come when I
shall be taken at my true worth.”

“ Heaven forbid ! ” exclaimed Lady Clevedon as they
drove through the gates of her domain ; “ that would be a
punishment greater than you could bear ! ”

He made a grimace.

“To a woman I must not grudge the last word,” he
said.

His cousin laughed.

“When a man begins to give points to his adversary on
account of her sex, the adversary may hoist the flag of
victory.”

“Take it,” he said, “take it and be thankful !”

Clevedon was a large ugly block of building, standing
upon a raised plateau, whence the land sloped majestically
towards the park.

The faces of the two children grew eager as the great
white house appeared in sight. The carriage having been
dismissed. Aunt Augusta proposed a stroll till Percy and
his sister should return from their ride. Meanwhile the

26

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

children might gather some hothouse flowers to take back
to their mother.

What a fine old place this is, in its own way ! ” Harry
observed, as they wended their steps to the garden ; it is
so gentlemanly, so ”

“ Harry ! There was a young man in ancient mythology
called

Nay, so stately, so calm, so well-bred ; so smooth
and blandly expansive,’’ pursued Harry, in language w^hich
would have pleased Quintilian, who always regarded
as hopeful those pupils whose literary productions re-
quired pruning, rather than the young proficients whose
style at the beginning showed the delicate reticence of
maturity.

“ I like the place ; I am not going to have it scoffed at,”
said Aunt Augusta.

“ Scoffed at ! I am admiring it. Scoffed at ! Why, I
have a friendly feeling towards every nook and corner of
it. I like it, I love it ; but — it amuses me ! ”

‘‘An incorrigible Momus !” cried Lady Clevedon.

“ It is perfect,” he broke out again. “ I am sure Geoffrey
and Viola agree with me that it is perfect.”

“You bewilder these poor children, Harry.”

“Just run your eye round the four quarters of the

A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOMUS,

27

heavens. Could anything be more dignified? I repeat
m'y question, Viola — could anything be more dignified ?

She shyly shook her head.

“No; nothing could be more dignified ! Look how the
land spreads out round the mansion, in a sort of liberal
manner, as if it would say : I am at your entire disposal ;
pray take as much of me as you please, there is no stint ;
be expansive ; the more so the better ; you have only to
mention the quantity, and it is yours !

“ Then observe what a benign and courteous sweep leads
the eye from the terrace-level to the park. No abrupt lines
there ; your very curves are baronial ! And your cattle !
What an air of conscious worth ! what splendour of outline
and richness of colour ! what harmony of action ! what a
Highland fling of movement ! what’’

“ If you make fun of my husband’s Highland cattle, he’ll
never forgive you : better make fun of me than that. Come,
don’t dawdle so ; you are getting too garrulous.”

But change of scene proved no check to his elo-
quence.

■ “ There is nothing in the world to beat an old English
garden,” he exclaimed, rhetorically. “What sweet and
lazy influences linger in the air by fern-fringed walls ! what
indolent joys exhale from flower-borders where violets and’

28

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

precocious primroses offer themselves to be cherished — it
is as if one had found a new world ! ”

Viola looked up at him wonderingly, while Geoffrey,
forgetting his shyness, suddenly began to talk — chiefly
about rabbits and pistols and repeating-rifles. Then they
all went into the hothouses, and came out laden with
delicate sweetly-scented flowers, which Viola touched with
ecstatic and reverent fingers.

The children were allowed to amuse themselves as they
pleased, while Aunt Augusta and her talkative cousin
strolled on together.

“Harry,’’ she said, after a few minutes of desultory
conversation, “have you given up that mad idea of
yours yet ? ”

“About music?” His face changed and saddened.
“ I cannot cure myself of the mad idea. Meanwhile,
of course, I retain my commission,” he added, rather
bitterly.

“ The sooner you cure yourself the better. As a musi-
cian you would starve. Besides, how do you know you
have enough talent to ”

“ I know nothing at all about my talents — (pardon me
for interrupting) ; I only know that failure in that pursuit
would be sweeter to me than success in any other.”

A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOM US.

29

“ Foolish boy !

“Now, Augusta, what do you mean? How often have
you preached to me against doing things by halves ; how
often have you pierced with ridicule men who ‘ took up ’
a thing, and tinkled amiably upon some instrument, or
made smudges on clean paper, — any one, in short, who
tried to imitate the last stage of an art without laying the
foundations. You said it was like the attempt of a builder
to roof a house that wasn’t built.”

“ Well ? ”

“Well ! why not build the house from the foundation?”

“Why not go and starve?” she inquired. “Go and
starve to slow music ? ”

Harry paused for a moment, looking at her ; and then,
with one of his sudden inconsistent actions, he lifted his
stick on to the tip of his first finger, balanced it there for
a moment skilfully, and shot it up far and swift towards
the sky. It rose, like a rocket, and came dowm again at
a little distance into a gooseberry-bed.

“Take care that is not your fate,” said Lady Clevedon.

“ It must have been splendid going up,” Harry returned ;
“and what a ‘fine rapture’ when it had risen to its utmost
and felt the heavens above, and the earth widen beneath
it ”

30

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

“ And how exhilarating when it felt itself in the goose-
berry-bed ! ’’

“There are many sticks rotting in the gooseberry-bed
that have never known the upper air at all,” Harry ob-
served; “they have secured themselves against all risk
of downfall by prudently taking the lowest place.”

“Like the Unjust Steward,” suggested Lady Clevedon,
whose Scripture was weak.

“ Or the rebellious angels,” added Harry, with a laugh.

He picked up a mouldering apple-twig and held it out
to his cousin to consider.

“ Observe, it is damp and brittle ; I can snap it any-
where, for it has not the toughness of life in it. Lichen
grows upon it, and unwholesome moss, and it is teeming
with crawling and creeping things, — shall I show you ? ”

“ Be good enough to keep away,” cried the lady hastily.

“ They are skurrying about in great agitation ; they can’t
imagine what has happened. They are telling one another
that they knew how it would be all along, and that if only
their advice had been listened to ”

“ D — a — m ! ” exclaimed Lady Clevedon, spelling the
word (after her own fashion) as a concession to public
sentiment, “here are Sir Philip Dendraith and his incom-
parable son ! What effrontery to come here before we

A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOM US,

31

have called at Upton Court ! I shall make him pay for
this!”

Sir Philip Dendraith was a tall, broad-shouldered man,
with a hooked nose, high cheek-bones, sharp little blue
eyes, and a grey beard, which retained signs of having once
been reddish in tint. The younger Philip resembled his
father scarcely at all ; he was a slim, dark-haired youth, with
face and figure almost faultless. Harry Lancaster, flinging
away the decayed apple-twig, stood watching him with sud-
den intentness, while Lady Clevedon, donning her stiffest air,
awaited the approach of the visitors. They raised their hats.

“Pardon our intrusion,” Sir Philip called out in loud
self-confident tones ; “ we were taking a walk across country
and lost our way ”

“ So I observe,” said her Ladyship.

“ Got into your park through the bit of woodland by
the roadside down yonder, and found ourselves in the
gardens before we knew where w’e were. Lady Clevedon,
I presume?”

She bowed.

“Not^ ?” with an interrogative glance at Harry.

“ Not,” she repeated conclusively.

“ Ah 1 ” observed Sir Philip, throwing himself back and
looking round, “charming garden you have here.”

32

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

I am glad it pleases you.”

Oh, vastly, vastly ; fine old place altogether.”

Lady Clevedon stood waiting.

Ah ! ” cried Sir Philip, descrying Viola and Geoffrey in
the distance, “your children, no doubt?”

“No,” she said,, “not my children.”

“ Perhaps Lady Clevedon would be so kind as to mention
which is the shortest way out of her domain,” interposed
Philip Dendraith the younger ; “ we have intruded long
enough.”

“Allow me to come with you; it is not easy to find the
road unassisted,” said Harry.

Sir Philip, apparently much against his will, was then
hurried off by his son under Harry’s escort.

“ I trust we shall shortly renew our acquaintance,” he
said in parting; “near neighbours, like ourselves, should
make a point of being friendly.”

Again Lady Clevedon frigidly bowed.

As the three arrived at the end of the path they came
upon Geoffrey and Viola peering curiously into some hot-beds.

“ Lady Clevedon’s child!l:en ? ” repeated Sir Philip.

“ No ; her nephew and niece,” said Harry. '

Nice little girl I ” observed Philip the younger. “Fine

eyes.

A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOM US.

33

She flushed up, and took a step backwards.

‘‘ Let me see what colour they are.”

> She shut the lids tightly and covered her face.

‘‘ Oh ! unkind little girl I I shall* tell your mamma,” said
Philip teasingly.

“ Oh ! no, no, no ! ” she cried, with unexpected terror ;
^'please don’t tell her.”

‘‘Is the mamma so formidable? Well, then, let me
see your pretty eyes, and I promise not to tell how unkind
you were.”

But at this Viola again fell back, with a look of strange
distress, whereupon Harry took her hand and said sooth-
ingly, “ Never mind, Viola ; this gentleman was only joking ;
he won’t tell your mother, if you don’t wish it.”

He was holding open the garden-door as he spoke.

On the threshold Philip stopped, looked over his shoulder,
and kissed the tips of his fingers gallantly.

“ Nut-brown maid, farewell ! ” he said, and passed through
with a laugh.

‘* Come on, Viola ; let’s go with them,” cried Geoffrey,
taking her hand ; “ he’s rather a lark, that fellow.”

But Viola passionately flung hip off, and before he
realised what had happened the child had run to the
farther end of the garden.

VOL. I.

C

34

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

‘‘ Rum things girls ! ” was Geoffrey^s comment as he
pursued his new-found hero and philosophically left the
eternal riddle to solve itself among the gooseberry-
bushes.

When Harry returned after conducting the trespassers
into the Upton road, he found his cousin in a very bad
temper.

“ Intolerable creature ! ” she broke out. “Where can he
have sprung from, with his voice and his manners ? ^ Fine

place ’ indeed ! Impertinent upstart ! You were asking
what a gentleman is, Harry; well, I can tell you what a
gentleman is not : — Sir Philip Dendraith.”

“ Tactless person, certainly ; and rather uncouth.
The father and son are a curious contrast, are they
not?”

“ Most extraordinary ! That boy is a Dendraith all over.
Fine-looking lad.”

“A gentleman, I suppose?” said Harry.

“ Every inch ! ’’

“I thought so. Well, as a mere man^ give me that
‘ lumbering wain,’ his father ; more qualities to rely
upon there ; more common but cosy humanness. There
is something polished and cold-blooded about that young
Adonis, with his white teeth, that gives me a shiver

A YOUNG MAN CALLED MOM US.

35

all up my spine. It is astonishing how insolent polished
people can be.”

“The Dendraiths always were a little cold-blooded,”
said Lady Clevedon, “and a little over clever. It is
not human to be very clever ; one cannot disguise that
fact.’^

CHAPTER III.

PHILIP DENDRAITH.

Sir Philip Dendraith, by a sudden turn of fortune’s
wheel, had been hoisted out of obscure and somewhat
speculative spheres into the pure white light of what
Harry Lancaster had called in his haste “landed
propriety.”

He was related to the last owner of the Dendraith estate
through his mother’s family, a fact which he had enjoyed
and made much use of in his former existence, having a
highly developed instinct of adoration for social pre-
eminence, and a ferret’s keenness in routing out unwilling
relatives, lofty and far-removed, but profitable.

“My cousin, Sir John Dendraith,” might have fallen
from his dying lips in those prehistoric days when he
owned to the solid and simple name of Thompson, and
used to wander with his wife and son from small furnished
house to smaller furnished house, where crochet antima-
cassars and crystal lustres gave the keynote to existence.

PHILIP DENDRAITH.

37

In those dark ages Mr. Thompson used to be always
launching ideas which required capital and a company —
brilliant ideas that only wanted carrying out, such as a
method of blacking boots by machinery, patent umbrellas
that opened automatically on being held upright, and
folded up again when their position was reversed (facetious
friends used to say that they even buttoned and unbuttoned
themselves as occasion required). There were ingenious
hooks and eyes that never came undone until their owner
desired it, and then yielded without a struggle; coal-
scuttles which made the putting on of coal a positive
luxury to a sensitive invalid, — and other wonderful inven-
tions, not to speak of the celebrated millennium double-
action roller-blind, whose tassel could under no circum-
stances come off in the hand, and which never acquired
the habit of rolling up askew and remaining blocked in a
slanting and crazy position half-way up .the window. As
for his mowing-machine, and his instrument for putting
out fires in their most advanced stages, a child might
use them.

Philip Thompson was endeavouring to increase his small
income by bringing some of these valuable ideas into
notice, when one morning, to his infinite surprise, he awoke
and found himself Sir Philip Dendraith ; that is to say, he

38

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

was informed that, by a most extraordinary series of events,
he had become the next heir to the Dendraith estates, and
it was hoped that he would assume the family name.

This he lost no time in doing, and with the name of
Thompson he put away also things Thompsonian ; his
patent umbrellas and coal-scuttles ; and now only his
plump, simple-minded wife took any pride or interest in
these once absorbing themes.

The social world was to this fortune-favoured man the
only and the best of all possible worlds ; to rise in it his
sole ambition. With this object the family had always
conscientiously kept somef/img beyond their means, whether
(said Lady Clevedon) it were a phaeton or a footman, or
merely a titled relative, stuffed and cured, to stand pictur-
esquely in the middle distance and be alluded to. This,
she added profanely, was of more value than many footmen.

Her inclination had been to remain unaware of the
existence of the new baronet, but this idea was more easily
conceived than carried out.

When a church-bell clangs loudly every Sunday morning
close to your ears, philosophy counsels that you take no
notice of the barbarism, but human frailty may neverthe-
less succumb.

Sir Philip had entered upon his new sphere in high good

PHILIP DENDRAITH,

39

spirits, determined to enjoy all that it offered to the full,
and to take his place among his peers with a dash and style
that would make him knowm and respected throughout
the country.

There was no escaping him. Like a teasing east wind
that blows low, he met one round every corner, blustered
against one at every turn, let one face north, south, east,
or west in fruitless attempt at evasion. Perhaps Lady
Clevedon, who could turn things social into ridicule cleverly
enough, but to whom social laws were nevertheless indisput-
able, felt all along that there was no escaping the acquaint-
ance of Philip Dendraith, be he mad, drunk, or a fiend in
human shape ; and she finally, in no very affable mood,
drove over and called at Upton Court.

Lady Dendraith’s plump good-nature much amused her
visitor, and the latter came back disposed to be friendly
towards the simple old person who was full of innocent
pride in her husband and son, as well as brimming over
with naive astonishment at the sudden change in their
fortunes.

“After lodgings and furnished houses, a place like this
does seem wonderfully palatial ; but my husband and son
take to it as if they had been here all their lives, bless their
hearts ! ”

40

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

“Bless your heart, old lady!” thought the visitor, who
was forgiving to any one who amused her. “ If ever there
was a good old soul you are that person, my dear ! ”

As for Lord Clevedon, he regarded his new neighbour
with the highest disfavour, though he too recognised the
duty of knowing a Dendraith, in whatever stage of mental
or moral decomposition he might chance to be.

“The fellow has none of the real Dendraith blood in
him,” he said ; “it was a sad pity that the old stock died
out 1 ”

“Have you seen the son?” asked Lady Clevedon.

Her husband straightened his thin figure, and drawing
his head out of his necktie and collar, gave it a twist as if
he had half a mind to unscrew the thing and take it down
for closer examination — perhaps under the impression that
the machinery wanted oiling.

“Yes, I have seen the son.”

“Not like either of his parents, I think. Did he not
strike you as being very like that portrait at the old house
on the cliff of Andrew Dendraith ? — the man that had such
an extraordinary story, you know. I think he used to take
opium among other things, and was suspected of having
murdered his wife — though nobody could ever prove it.
He was a man of considerable power, but I don't fancy he

PHILIP DENDRAITH.

41

minded the precepts he used to write in his copy-books as
he might have done.”

“The fellow was no credit to his relations,” said Lord
Clevedon, screwing his head on again as a hopeless case
(the works required a thorough cleaning, and he didn’t see
his way to getting it done).

“Andrew Dendraith,” he continued, “was one of the
bad characters that seem to crop up in the family now and
again, as if there were some evil strain in it not to be
overcome.”

“ It is curious that this young Philip should be so like
Andrew,” said Lady Clevedon ; “ the relationship is not very
close, but the resemblance, to my mind, is striking. In
figure they are alike ; this boy is tall and slim and well put
together, as Andrew was, and he has the same cold, keen,
handsome face, with perfect, clean-cut features, and already
there is plenty of control over the muscles. His manners
are polished — too polished for his age, almost ; though
perhaps one fancies that, through seeing him beside his
awful father, who really ”

“ Who, upon my honour ” assisted Lord Clevedon.

“ Is likely to give the county a severe fit of social
indigestion,” concluded his wife.

However, the county gulped him down ; and though it

42

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

suffered from a pain in the chest, it did its duty to the new-
representative of the Dendraiths, calling upon his wife with
exemplary punctuality.

Mrs. Sedley, among the rest, wearily set out to perform
her task. She put on her best bonnet, provided herself
with a card-case, and ordered the carriage.

No one ever quite knew if that old vehicle would hold
together for another drive, but the family seemingly meant
to go on paying its calls in it, till the faithful servant died
in harness,’’ as Harry Lancaster used to say, with character-
istic fondness for incongruous metaphors.

Geoffrey saw the old chariot at the door, and rushed in
to ask if he and Viola might accompany their mother.

‘‘ And Bill Dawkins,” added Viola.

“ What larks if we break down on the road ! ” cried
Geoffrey.

However, no such lively calamity occurred ; they rumbled
respectably along the high-road and through the little vil-
lages, Bill Dawkins behaving with the utmost decorum on
the back-seat beside Geoffrey ; so much so, in fact, that Viola
was afraid he would get tired — whereat her brother jeered.

“Bill Dawkins isn’t 2i girl T' he cried scornfully. “Are
you, Bill ? ” at which compliment the poodle thumped his
tail upon the carriage-cushion and cast down his eyes.

PHILIP DENDRAITH,

43

Sir Philip, coming down the avenue of Upton Court,
met the carriage driving up. Viola and Geoffrey recognised
him and looked at one another.

If Lady Clevedon or Harry Lancaster had been present,
they would have derived much gratification from the sight of
the meeting between Mrs. Sedley and her new neighbour.

Sir Philip raised his hat gallantly and gave a loud shout
of welcome.

“ How do you do, Mrs. Sedley ? Going to call on the
old lady? That’s right; she’s just having a nap, — rather a
weakness of Lady Dendraith’s — afternoon naps.”

‘‘ I fear we shall disturb her,” said Mrs. Sedley in her
steady, shy, withdrawn tones.

“ Dear me, no, not at all ; she will be delighted, I assure
you. We were wondering we hadn’t seen anything of you
before. However, better late than never. Family cares, I
daresay. These your chicks ? Halloa ! why, these are the
two children I saw at Clevedon ! Lady Clevedon’s nephew
and niece, of course. Well, my boy, can you conjugate your
rvTTo, or do you spend all your time and brains on old
Father Thames ? You must make friends with my boy,
though he is some years older than you ; he can conjugate
you anything you like, I can tell you. The young people
are getting so clever nowadays, there’s no holding them.

44

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

I see the little girl has had the good taste to copy her
mother,”. Sir Philip continued, chucking Viola under the
chin. ‘‘ Couldn’t have had a better model, my dear. Will
you give me a kiss?” he asked, bending down without
waiting for permission.

“ No, I won’t,” said the child, shrinking away from him
and squeezing Bill Dawkins uncomfortably close to the
farther side of the carriage.

Sir Philip laughed.

“ Ah ! you don’t care to kiss an old man like me ! ”

“No, I don't want to kiss you!” said Viola irately.
Bill Dawkins barked.

“Viola, dear!” remonstrated Mrs. Sedley, at which a
look of intense trouble came into the child’s face. If her
mother’s sacred wishes and her own feelings should now
come into open conflict, there would blaze up a small Hell
in that childish breast ; for, trivial as the occasion seemed
to grown-up consciousness, the intensity of feeling that
it called out is impossible to represent, much more to
exaggerate.

“ Come now, I must have a kiss,” said Sir Philip in a
playful manner, and going, round to the other side of the
carriage. “ If you give me a kiss. I’ll give you a sweetmeat
when we get up to the house; there’s a bargain now!”

PHILIP DEN DR AIT H.

45

“I don’t want sweatmeats — I don’t want sweetmeats,”
cried Viola, darting away again in increased dislike as Sir
Philip’s bearded face appeared beside hfer.

‘‘ She does not need any reward for behaving politely, I
am sure,” said Mrs. Sedley. “ Viola, dearest, you will give
this gentleman a kiss when he asks you to do so.”

The child’s eyes fixed themselves in silent desperation
on the ground. Her face became white and set.

“ That’s a good little girl,” said Sir Philip. ‘‘ I am sure
we shall soon be excellent friends, for I am very fond of
children. Now for my kiss.”

He bent forward to take it, when Viola, with a suppressed
cry, wildly plunged off the seat to the bottom of the carriage
and hid her face in the rug. Upon this Bill Dawkins be-
came violently excited, alternately jumping down to thrust
his nose against Viola’s hair, and springing on to the seat
to bark persistently in Sir Philip’s face, getting more and
more enraged as that gentleman threw back his head and
laughed heartily, with the remark that he had never been
treated so unkindly by a lady before.

“Well, I suppose I must give it up for the present,” he
said. “ If you will drive on to the house, Mrs. Sedley, 1
will return with you.”

“ Oh ! please don’t let us bring you in,” began the

46

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

visitor, but Sir Philip drowned her remonstrance, and
directed the coachman to drive on.

He met the carriage at the door, and helped Mrs. Sedley
to alight.

Bill Dawkins sprang out with a yelp of joy, followed
by Geoffrey. On the steps stood Philip Dendraith the
younger.

Now then, little woman,” said Sir Philip kindly enough,
as Viola held back, with defiant eyes. Come along.”

“Come on, Ila, you young silly!” urged her brother.
“ He doesn’t want to kiss you now.”

Sir Philip leant across the carriage with a laugh, upon
which the child, making a violent effort to escape, flung her-
self against the door at the farther side, and fell, hurting her
head and arm. In falling she had moved the handle of
the door, which suddenly burst open.

“ Good heavens 1 save her 1 ” cried Sir Philip.

Before the words were out of his mouth his son, with
marvellous rapidity, had darted round just in time to rescue
the child from a dangerous fall. Her body was half out of
the carriage when he caught her in his arms and carried
her quickly into the house, where he laid her on a sofa
and summoned his mother to the rescue. Mrs. Sedley had,
fortunately, not seen the accident.

PHILIP DEN DR A I TH.

47

“ Poor dear little creature ! ” cried the good Lady Den-
draith, who had just been roused from her “nap/^ ‘^are you
much hurt, my dear ? I think not, for she doesn’t cry at all.”

“She never cries,” said her mother, shaking her head;
“she is like a little woman when she hurts herself.”

“ Dear, dear ! — what would she like, I wonder ? — some
brandy and water to revive her, and perhaps she ought to
see the doctor.”

But Mrs. Sedley thought that she could easily manage
with the help of a few simple remedies. Viola appeared
to have been rather startled than really hurt. She lay
quite quiet, but with an anxious, watchful look in her
eyes, which changed to something approaching terror when
Sir. Philip’s loud voice was heard in the hall.

She started up.

“ Don’t let that man come in ; don’t let him come in ! ”
she cried wildly.

Lady Dendraith looked surprised, and Mrs. Sedley natu-
rally felt uncomfortable.

“ Hush, Viola dear, nobody will disturb you ; you should
not speak so, you know ; it is not like a little lady.”

“ I don’t want to be like a little lady ! ” cried Viola, who
seemed to be in a strange state of excitement.

“ I think,” said Mrs. Sedley, “ that I ought to take her

48

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

home at once, though I am sorry to cut short my visit to
you, Lady Dendraith; and I am most grateful for your
kindness to my little girl.”

When Mrs. Sedley said she would go she always went
without delay, and Viola having shaken hands with her
hostess (she refused to kiss her, though without impolite
remarks), returned to the carriage on foot, looking behind
her in a frightened manner lest her bete noir^e should be
present.

He was standing in the entrance when they went out,
and expressed much concern at the shortness of the visit.
Viola shrank away to the other side of her mother.

‘‘ Well, young lady, I am glad to see you are all right
again. Upon my honour, you sent my heart into my
mouth when you burst that door open ! What a fierce little
maiden it is ! I hope you won’t treat your lovers in this
fashion in the time to come, or you will have much to
answer for.”

Mrs. Sedley, objecting to have Viola spoken to about
lovers, cut the conversation short by shaking hands with
her host once more and entering the carriage.

“No, I am not going to ask for a kiss now,” said Sir
Philip, as Viola shrank away hastily,’ “ but I think my son,
who saved you from a severe accident, deserves one ; and

PHILIP DENDRAITH.

49

you won’t mind kissing hini^ though you are so unkind to
his poor old father.”

‘‘ I don’t want to kiss anybody as long as I live ! ” cried

Viola. “ I hate everybody ; I ” She broke down with

sheer passion.

Father and son burst out laughing, and Philip, bending
down, lifted her swiftly in his arms, quietly kissed her in
spite of her violent resistance, and placed her in the carriage
beside the poodle, who received her with acclamation.
She struck her laughing enemy with her clenched fist, and
then flinging herself against the cushions, hid her face,
drawing up the rug over her head, and burst into low
heart-broken sobs.

“Viola, Viola !” in tones of surprised remonstrance from
Mrs. Sedley.

The carriage rolled away down the avenue and emerged
into the bare down country, but the child did not stir.
Mrs. Sedley was afraid that this unwonted excitement
might be the precursor of some illness, and thought it
wiser not to interfere except by a few soothing words.

Geoffrey showed a boyish inclination to laugh at his
sister for making such a fuss about nothing, but his mother
reproved him, as it seemed to make her more excited.

Bill Dawkins was greatly concerned about her. He

VOL. I.

D

50

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

searched her out among the rugs, as if he were hunting for
rats, and expressed his sympathy with wistful eloquence.
Once she put her arm round his neck and drew him to
her passionately, and if it had not been for his thick coat,
the good poodle might have felt some hot tears falling on
his shaggy head.

Viola did not recover her spirits all that day. Mrs.
Sedley watched her anxiously, and sent her to bed early,
with compresses on her arm and a bandage on her head.

When all was quiet, and Viola found herself alone, she
crept out of bed, went to the window and drew up the
blind. There stood the avenue, stately and beautiful in
the moonlight, wreathed with mists.

The vision brought the tears welling up again from the
depths of the child’s wounded soul. Her grief was all the
bitterer because she could not express it in words even to
herself ; she could only feel over and over again, with all
a child’s intensity, that she had been treated with insolence,
as a being whose will was of no moment, whose very person
was not her own ; who might be kissed or struck or played
with exactly as people pleased, as if she were a thing with-
out life or personality. Her sense of individual dignity —
singularly strong in this child — was outraged, and she felt
as if she could never forgive or forget the insult as long as

PHILIP DENDRAITH,

51

she lived. The jocular good-natured way in which it had
been offered made it only the more unbearable.

‘‘ I hate you ; I hate^^ cried Viola, mentally apostrophising
her enemies, “ I hate everybody in the world — except
mother and Bill Dawkins.’’

library
university of

CHAPTER IV.

RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES,

As soon as her children had acquired enough cohesion to
sit upon a pew-seat, Mrs. Sedley had taken them to church.
Sometimes, indeed, she had been too hasty and taken them
almost before that epoch, so that hapless little beings
used to crumple up and slip to the ground, keeping their
mother occupied in gathering and replacing them during the
service.

Among Viola’s earliest remembrances were these minia-
ture declines and falls, which had generally been occasioned
by her being painfully tired during the early part of the
service through the dire necessity of sitting still, and by the
sleepy exhaustion produced at last by an infinite number of
suppressed desires; among them a very vivid longing to
stroke the sealskin jacket of the former Lady Dendraith
who used to sit in the pew just in front of her. Once, in
fact, watching her opportunity with beating heart^ she had
actually realised her soul’s ambition by drawing her little

RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES,

53

hand timidly down from Lady Dendraith’s shoulders to her
waist, and then leaving off in a panic on hearing a smothered
chuckle from one of her too wide-awake brothers.

These delinquents took a special delight in leading her
into mischief during service. The pew was large, and ran. in
two directions at right angles to one another, so that there
was one part of it quite out of Mrs. Sedley’s range of vision,
where unholy deeds might be wrought.

Here they would pelt one another with catapults, or
build a Tower of Babel out of prayer-books ; the stately
edifice almost reaching to the top of the pew. (It was
one of Harry Lancaster’s wicked sayings, that Mrs. Sedley
was going to mount into heaven upon a staircase of these
volumes, and it must be admitted that the number of
her books of devotion was exciting to the profane imagi-
nation.)

Viola characteristically took all things connected with
religion in grim earnest. Her after-pangs of remorse, if
she had taken too much interest in the Tower of Babel,
were very keen, and she often suffered indescribable terrors
from the conviction that her sins would be punished in the
fires of hell. Sometimes she experienced strange emotional
upliftings' when she believed that she felt the very presence
of Christ, and a passionate inspiration for a life devoted

54

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

only to His service. And then would follow days of fruit-
less effort to keep up to the level of these moments of
ecstasy.

On Sunday afternoons it was Mrs. Sedley/s custom to
read the Bible with the two children, taking them into
her own sitting-room (boudoir is a term inconsistent
with this lady), and closing the door after her with a
quiet solemnity which to Viola had something of awful
sacredness.

Geoffrey, alas ! had been known to whistle a secular
melody after that ceremony of initiation, and it was a
common amusement with him to secretly alter all the
markers in his mother's Bible and “ Daily Meditations," or
to place them against chapters in the Old Testament which
consisted chiefly of proper names, because his mother found
some difficulty in pronouncing them.

After the reading the children were allowed to express
their ideas upon what they had heard, and to ask a few
questions. Geoffrey always took a morbid interest in
Satan, and (Satan being a biblical character) Mrs. Sedley
could not consistently refuse to gratify it. His questions
were of a nature to whiten the hair of an orthodox mother !

Viola's difficulties were of another kind. She could
not understand the stories of holy treachery and slaughter

RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES.

55

related of the children of Israel, in whose wanderings she
and her brother always took the keenest interest. It was
an actual grief to her when her heroes suddenly broke away
from a most well-ordered and respectable career to go forth,
like a swarm of hornets, to injure and destroy. That “ the
Lord commanded them^' only made the matter darker.
Mrs. Sedley could not enter into these difficulties. She
herself would not have hurt the poor fly, which appears
to be regarded as the last creature entitled to human mercy
(unless, perhaps, it interrupted her prayers or distracted her
attention from holy things) ; but she entirely approved of
the wholesale massacres perpetrated by the chosen people
in the name of the I.ord, and considered that His name
was greatly glorified thereby.

Viola was also disturbed by the strange story about
Balaam when he was sent for by Balak to come and curse
him” the Israelites. “God came unto Balaam at night,
and said unto him : If the men come to call thee, rise up
and go with them : but yet the word which I shall say
unto thee, that shalt thou do.”

So Balaam naturally goes.

Then, to Violas infinite bewilderment, “God’s anger
was kindled because he went, and the angel of the Lord
stood in the way for an adversary against him.”

56

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

The child’s face of dismay at this apparent instance of
Divine inconsistency would have been comic had it not
been piteous.

But why was God angry when He had told Balaam the
night before to go with the men if they came to call
him?”

Mrs. Sedley first said that ‘‘the ways of Providence were
past finding out,” but remembering that her sister-in-law
had once burst into a fit of immoderate laughter at this
reply, she suggested that the Lord had possibly meant
to try Balaam’s faithfulness.

She never noticed in her younger pupil the hungry
desire to find something that she could worship, the piteous
efforts of the tender-hearted child to adore the God who
sent forth the Israelites to smite whole races with the
edge of the sword, and to leave not one remaining, of the
people.

Fortunately the New Testament was read on alternate
Sundays, and if to love Christ be the one thing needful
for salvation, Viola certainly fulfilled the condition. She
was an enthusiastic little Christian, though there were yet
many flaws in her orthodoxy which her mother had to patch
up as best she might.

Being made sound on one side, she was apt to give way

RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES,

57

on the other, causing poor Mrs. Sedley much trouble, and
demanding more mental agility than she possessed. How
God could be willing to accept the pain and grief of
one divine being as a substitute for the pain and grief
of other guilty beings was what Viola could not under-
stand. If the guilt could pass away from the guilty at all,
how should God let the burden of it rest on some one else,
as if God were greedy of pain for His creatures, and could
not forgive generously and entirely ? It was like the story
of the young prince who, when he was naughty, had a
little slave beaten in his stead, quite to the satisfaction
of the royal father. Religious difficulties began early in
Viola’s experience, as probably they do in most essentially
religious natures. Doctrine and dogma and commentary
were provided for her so liberally, that, as Wilkins the
coachman technically remarked, ‘,Ht was enough to give
the poor child a surfeit.” Thomas, with his practical
instincts, “didn’t see no sense in cramming a lot o’ religion
into a young lady with Miss Viola’s prospects, he didn’t —
not a lot o’ fancy stuff of Mrs. Sedley’s makin’ up, as
drawed down the face till it was as long as a ’olly’ock : and
never a smile or a ‘good-day’ to a soul about the place —
he didn’t see what good come of such religion, he didn’t.”
And Thomas shoved his spade into the earth with a vigour

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

58

corresponding to the vigour of his conviction that if he
could see no use in a thing, use in it there could not
possibly be.

When Geoffrey was away (and this, of course, was during
the greater part of the year) Viola led a strange, lonely
life. She had no companions, Mrs. Sedley being afraid
to let her associate ihuch with her cousins at Cleve-
don, because their training was, in her opinion, so
godless.

Viola’s education was of the simplest character. Her
mother gave her lessons in history, geography, and arith-
metic every morning after the usual Bible-reading and
prayer, and as she grew older Viola had to practise her
music for an hour every afternoon. Music being one of
her passions, the hour, in spite of its drudgery, had its
charms. The piano was in the drawing-room, a large
dreary, dimly-lighted dungeon, which chilled the very
marrow of one’s bones. The furniture was set stiffly against
the colourless walls, while the dreary ornaments under
their glass shades seemed — as Harry Lancaster fantasti-
cally remarked — like lost souls that had migrated into
glass and china bodies, and there petrified, entranced,
were forced to stand in the musty silence till the crack
of Doom.

RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES,

59

Just for one hour daily that musty silence was broken.
It was an enchanted hour, especially in autumn and
winter, when the firelight made the shadows dance on the
walls and ceiling, and threw a rosy glow over the whole
colourless scene. And then the spirit of music arose and
went forth, weaving spells, and calling from the shadows
a thousand other spirits who seemed to fill the dull old
room with tumultuous life and the air with strange sweet
thrills and whispers from a world unknown. Then the
lost souls would cast off the curse that held them, and
become half-human again, though they were very sad,
indeed quite heart-broken, for they knew they were im-
prisoned in these ridiculous bodies till time should be no
more, and then what awaited them but the torments of the
damned ? Viola would be seized sometimes with a panic
as she thought of it.

There were two glass lustres on the marble mantelpiece,
which caught the firelight brilliantly, and in the centre
an ormolu clock with a pale blue face of Sevres china, a
clock whose design must have been conceived during a
vivid opium dream of its author, so wild and unexpected
were its outlines, so distracted and fantastic its whole
being.

“ A drunken beast,” Harry Lancaster had once called

6o

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

the thing after a state call at the Manor-House. As it had
cost fifty pounds, Mrs. Sedley fondly hoped and concluded
that it was exquisitely beautiful, and she would have been
very much amazed, though but slightly offended, had any
one presumed to doubt its loveliness.

If the imprisoned soul had a sensitive nature, how it
must have suffered from the impertinent quirks and affected
wrigglings of its domicile ! how it must have hated being
misrepresented to the world by so florid and undignified a
body !

Perhaps Viola enjoyed her hour of practising so much
partly because she was then certain to be alone. At no
other time in the day could she count upon this. She
would often remain in the drawing-room long after the
practising was over, much to the astonishment of her
mother.

There was something indescribably fascinating to the
child in the silence that followed the music ; it was quite
unlike the silence that preceded it — unlike every other
silence that one knew.

In autumn, when it grew dusk early in the afternoon, she
could hear, between the pauses of the music, the sound of
old ‘‘ Willum’s ” broom sweeping the dead leaves from the
path before the window. This too fascinated her. The

RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES.

6i

notes would pour out at times as if they were inspired by
the roar of the wind outside, which was stripping the great
trees of their foliage, — rand suddenly they would cease — a
pause — then always again, through the wind’s tumult, the
steady swish-swish upon the gravel, and the old man’s
bent, patient form moving slowly forwards along his path
of toil.

The wild freedom of the wind, the wild sweetness of the
remembered music — the dim room, the lost souls — what
what was it in the scene that stirred the childish heart to
its depths ? Nature, human toil, human possibilities, joys
unutterable, and unutterable dooms, — even here, in this
sheltered monotonous home, those spectres stood upon
the threshold of a young life, to announce their presence
to the soul.

CHAPTER V.

BREAKING BOUNDS.

If only she was let alone, Viola could make herself very
happy in the gardens and quaint old surroundings of her
home. She had the poetic faculty of drawing out the
secrets of common things. The cucumber-frames, the old
garden, the tumble-down red-roofed sheds where Thomas
potted his geraniums, the apple-house smelling so deliciously,
and the conservatory, with its warm sweet scents of earth
and flowers; not one of these but gave her exquisite
pleasure.

She had many favourite haunts and one secret retreat in
the heart of a little wood whither she used to run at rare
and ecstatic moments when she managed to elude the
vigilance of her nurse.

Had it not been for Viola's loving reverence for her
mother, she would have much oftener tasted the delights
of liberty, for they were very sweet ; poor little phantom of
liberty as it was that she enjoyed, when for a brief half-hour

BREAKING BOUNDS.

63

she buried herself in her leafy hermitage, and felt that no
human being in all the world knew where she was or could
interfere with her, mind or body.

Viola had all sorts of treasures here, gathered in the
woods and fields : plants, snail-shells, oak-apples, and in-
sects which she kept in a large deal-box furnished forth with
mould and greenery, much after the fashion of the poor
tadpoles’ home, — those tadpoles who, alas ! had never
thriven, and one morning, after a night of heavy rain, had
been washed away, Heaven only knew whither. That had
been a real tragedy to Viola, and now another was in
store for her.

It was autumn ; a mildly splendid day late in the season,
but singularly warm for the time of year.

The nurse, happily, became languid with the heat, and
sat down, while Viola was allowed to wander about by her-
self. She took the opportunity to visit her domain. The
sunshine that filtered through the fretted beech-roof seemed
different from any other sunshine that ever worked a forest-
miracle; the wreaths of clematis and eglantine and the
glossy-leaved briony flung themselves from branch to branch
with wilder freedom than in any other spot in all the earth —
so thought their little votary. The place corresponded to
the vividly fresh and joyous side of the child’s nature, as

I

64

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

the chill drawing-room, with its lost and tortured souls, and
its patient old patrol without sweeping dead leaves from
others’ pathways, answered to the more thoughtful and
melancholy side of her character.

The bower was sacred to Life and Liberty ; the drawing-
room to servitude and death, in all the forms in which they
attack humanity.

Across the lawn, with Bill Dawkins at her heels, along
a flower-bordered walk behind the garden-wall, Viola has-
tened ; then out by a wicket-gate into the park, and across
the open, in the face of staring cows, to a little copse, the
sacred grove wherein the temple stood. She plunged in
and pursued her way along the path wLich she had worn for
herself in struggling through the underwood. She paused
for a moment, thinking she caught an unusual sound in the
solitude. There seemed to be a slight rustling and shaking
among the leaves, as if the nerves of the little wood were
thrilling. Viola’s heart beat fast. What if her temple were
discovered and desecrated ? She hurried on breathlessly ;
the mysterious tremor continuing, or rather increasing, as
she came near. Her forebodings were only too true !

There, in the holy of holies, stood Thomas, pruning-knife
in hand (he had always been a maniacal pruner), tearing and
cutting down the magnificent sheets of clematis, — just then

BREAKING BOUNDS.

65

in the height of its glory, — crushing the berries of the
briony beneath his heavy boots, and running his ruthless
knife round the trunks of the trees where the ivy climbed
too high.’

‘‘ O Thomas, Thomas ! what have you done ? ’’ exclaimed
Viola piteously. Bill Dawkins barked aggressively at the de-
stroyer with his tail erect, exactly as if he were saying, “ On
behalf, sir, of this young lady, I demand an explanation.”

The old iconoclast turned slowly round and looked at
Viola and her poodle, not in the least understanding.

“ I’m a takin’ the ivy off some of these ’ere trees,” he
observed, dragging down a great network of greenery and
flinging it on the ground.

, Why do you take down the pretty ivy ? ” asked the
child tearfully.

“ Explain yourself, sir,” barked Bill Dawkins.

“ Why, because it’ll kill the trees if I leaves it to grow,”
said Thomas.

“ But why do you pull down the clematis and the briony ?
Oh, why do you, Thomas ? ”

“Why, Miss,” said Thomas, puzzled, “I thought as it
looked untidy sprawling all over the place ; I didn’t know
as you liked to see it, or I wouldn’t have touched it ; not
on no account.”

VOL. I.

E

66

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

Viola gave the old man a little sad forgiving smile, and
the hot tears fell as she moved desolately away, like some
lost spirit driven from its home.

What maniac was it who said that sorrow is the nurse
of virtue ? Surely it is the inspirer of all rebellious sins.
It is like a storm, destroying old landmarks. How petty,
how unnoticeable to the great tempest must seem the little
walls and fences marking the ‘‘ mine ” and “ thine ’’ of
men ! And great sorrow, whatever its occasion, has in it
all the blindness and the passion of a tempest.

It was not merely the defilement of the consecrated spot
that filled the childish heart with grief. In its destruction
Viola dimly saw a type of the degrading of all loveliness,
the crushing of all exquisite and delicate things. A lonely
life had fostered in her this poetic tendency to read figura-
tive meanings into outward objects ; and these types were
to her not mere shadows, but solid links that bound to-
gether all the world, material and spiritual, in an intimately
related whole.

It had always been one of Viola^s dearest ambitions
to reach the sea, the vision of whose sparkling immensity
had strongly moved her when she and Geoffrey used to
go up to the top of the great avenue and look down
upon it.

BREAKING BOUNDS.

67

But she was strictly forbidden to wander beyond the
garden when her nurse was not with her, and the sea
was not only beyond the garden, but beyond the park 1
Yet the sight of the avenue, with the long afternoon
shadows lying across it, its tempting perspective leading
the eye toward the forbidden country, filled Viola with
an overpowering desire to be on the verge of the great
waters, to feel the sea-wind in her face and hear the boom
of the waves upon the beach.

Her grief made ordinary rules seem petty, and she
turned her steps tow^ards the avenue, without pausing
to consider consequences, causing Bill Dawkins to give a
yelp of joy, and to run gaily after the cattle, who were
staring with all their might at the intruders. And now
the spirit of adventure began to stir in the child's breast,
and she instinctively quickened her footsteps, thrilled with
the sensation of her freedom and ready to buy it at almost
any price.

Arrived at the top of the avenue, she stood breathless
— Bill Dawkins by her side — and gazed at the brilliant
scene before her. Wood and field and farmstead lay
placidly dozing in the benedictory sunshine ; these merging
gradually into bare downs, and these again abruptly ending
in the cliffs which reared their stately ramparts to the sea.

68

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

The sea ! Ah ! there it lay stretched in a long gleaming
line from farthest east to farthest west, hiding its mystery
and its passion with a lovely smile.

Viola, climbing the locked park-gate, found herself upon
the public road. She felt a faint thrill of awe as she saw
it stretching before her, white and lonely between the
clipped hedges.

It was poor upland country; quite different from the
land about the Manor-House, which lay in the valley of a
little stream. But so much the more wild and delightful !

How far away the sea might be, Viola did not know ;
she made straight for it, as if she had been a pilgrim bound
for her shrine.

It was very lonely. For half an hour- she had walked
without meeting any one, and then the road ran through a
little village where some children were playing, and an old
woman crept along, with a bundle under her arm.

She stared at Viola, and the children stared. Bill Daw-
kins smelt at the bundle, and would have sniffed at the
children, but they fled shrieking to their mothers. Viola
quickened her pace, vaguely feeling that human beings
were menacing to her liberty. A turn of the road took her
again into solitude, and with it came a strange intoxication.
How marvellous was this sunshine pouring down over the

BREAKING BOUNDS.

69

wide cornfields ! It seemed to confuse all reflection and
to wrap the mind in an ecstatic trance. How madly the
larks were singing this afternoon ! The fields were athrill
with the flutter of wings and the air quivered with song.
Once Viola was tempted to leave the road and take a
short cut by the side of a little copse, where Bill Dawkins
went wild after game, and caused his mistress some delay
by his misdeeds. The shadows tvere perceptibly longer
when she and the dishevelled poodle (now distinguished
by a mud-covered nose) emerged again upon the high-road.

Here the sea came clearly into sight, acting upon the
heart of the little pilgrim as a trumpet-call. The country
became more and more bare and bleak as it rose towards
the cliffs ; the crops grew thinner, and gradually cultivation
fell off into little patches here and there, till at last it ceased
altogether, and there was nothing but the wild down grass
shivering in the sea-wind.

If inland, the sunshine had seemed brilliant and all-
pervading, here on the open downs, with the gleaming of
the sea all round, its glory was almost blinding.

Would they never reach the cliff-side ?

Viola started into a run, and Bill Dawkins bounded
madly in front of her, leaking back now and then to make
sure that she was following.

70

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

The saltness of the ocean was in the air; the fresh wind
stung the child’s cheeks to crimson. At last the end of
the journey was reached ; a little coastguard station marked
the highest point, and then the land sloped with different
degrees of abruptness towards the edge of the great cliff,
which rose to a vast height above the sea, so that a boat
rocking on the waves beneath had to be carefully sought
for by the eye, and appeared as a tiny black speck upon
the water.

There were a few streaks of smoke left far away on the
horizon, in the wake of vanished steamers, and one or two
fishing-boats lay becalmed ; the-sky line was lost in haze, a
fine-weather haze, betokening heat. Viola sat down on the
grass to rest, with her arm round Bill Dawkins. Oh the
marvel of that sunshine ! Row the air thrilled and trembled
with the splendour of it ! The earth seemed as if it were
swimming in a flood of light. Surely one could feel it reeling
through the regions of space, a joy-intoxicated creature !
Viola looked round, half in fear, half in rapture, at the
thought of the world’s mad dance through endless soli-
tudes, and she actually believed that she felt the whirl of
its motion as the breeze went by, and the wide horizon
seemed to swim round her dizzily.

The swerving sensation was perhaps increased by watch-

BREAKING BOUNDS.

71

ing the sea-gulls poising and wheeling in the air along the
giddy cliff-side, and the jackdaws swarming and chattering
about its clefts and crevices.

Sometimes the gulls would rise above the summit of the
headland and come so close to Viola that she could hear
the strange creaking of their wings as they swooped and
swung and swept in a thousand graceful caprices of move-
ment, to finish dramatically with a sudden dive or turn
in the air, uttering their melancholy cry. Viola felt herself
thrill from head to foot. These birds fascinated her, but
she did not like them. They seemed cold, able, finished
creatures, but they had no feeling, they were utterly pitiless
— like Philip Dendraith, she thought. The little jackdaws
were not so graceful or so perfect, but they were pleasanter
and more human. They were like his kind old mother.

Ah ! how sweet was the scent of the earth ! how sweet the
breath of the sea ! Viola envied the family of the coastguards-
man who dwelt in the little whitewashed cottage, with its tar-
blackened waterbutt outside the door, and the flag placidly
curving over the roof in the faint sea-breeze. Two sea-gulls
with flashing plumage were sweeping round it, grandly
undulating, while on the bank outside the house lay a
young child with round limbs bare to the sun and winds,
a being almost as free as the wild sea-birds themselves.

72

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

Viola wished that she too had been a child of the coast-
guardsman, so that she might live always upon this cliff-
side, in the fresh winds; always — sleeping and waking-
have that sea-murmur in her ears, and the cry of the gulls
thrilling her with sweet fancies. She was too excited to
sit still. She rose presently and began to walk farther
along the cliff, going near enough to the edge to see the
scattered rocks at its foot, and to watch the gulls as they
circled and swooped and settled in busy companies,, intent
upon their fishing.

At some distance farther along the coast another head-
land ran out into the sea, and upon it Viola could discern
what looked like a ruined castle, standing desolate above
the waves. Had she known the part which that castle
was to play in her life she would have turned and fled
back to her home instead of pursuing her adventure. She
had heard her father speak of some old ruin on the coast :
how once it stood far inland, but the hungry sea had
gnawed at the cliffs till it crept up close to the castle,
which now stood defiant to the last, refusing to yield to
the besieger. As she drew near, Viola noticed that there
was a belt of wind-shorn trees encircling the ruin “at some
distance inland, and that in a hollow of the downs lay
what seemed to be the gardens and surroundings of a

BREAKING BOUNDS.

73

human habitation. A gate led into a short avenue, at
the end of which stood a large gloomy-looking house, built
of grey stone. The place appeared deserted and was falling
into decay. On the steps moss was growing luxuriantly, the
front-door gave the impression that it was never opened,
and the windows had evidently not been cleaned for years.:

Viola’s curiosity was aroused, but with it an undefined
sense of fear; the place was so strangely lonely, and had
such a deadly look of gloom. It recalled to the child her
own lonely position, and suggested vague and awesome
thoughts which had not assailed her out in the sunshine.
But she could not leave the vault-like old house without
further explorations. It had for her a mysterious fascina-
tion.

She found that it possessed great half-ruined stables and
a large yard at the back, — the weeds growing apace be-
tween the paving-stones. She ventured to try if she could
enter the house by the back-door, but it was locked; so
was the door of the stable.

The gardens, which lay sheltered from the wind in
the hollow, were beautiful in their neglected state. There
was a terrace on the higher ground with a stately stone
palisade, and at either end an urn, round which climbing
plants were wreathed in the wildest abandonment. Below,

74

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

among the little pillars of the parapet, a fiery growth of
flowers rushed up, flame-like, amid grasses and self-sown
vegetation of all kinds. The house was joined to the
ruin, which ran out upon the headland, and appeared to
be almost surrounded by the sea. Part of the castle had
been repaired and converted into a dwelling, and this
had then been added to, till the habitable portion of the
building attained its present gaunt appearance and great
size.

Viola’s next step was to explore the castle, which stood
perilously balancing itself on the extreme verge of the
land, striking roots, as it seemed, into the rock, and
clinging on to the narrow wave fretted headland for dear
life. The limestone cliff had been worn to a mere
splinter, which ran out into the sea, the neighbouring
land being reft into narrow gorges, into which the waves
rushed searchingly with deep reverberations. The ruin was
wonderfully preserved considering its exposed situation.
The walls were of immense thickness, and it seemed as
if the rock on which they stood must itself crumble before
they yielded to the long-continued assault of time and
weather. Apparently the castle had once been a Norman
stronghold, though now only a very small portion of it
remained to tell the tale.

BREAKING BOUNDS.

75

By this time the brilliancy of the day had begun to de-
cline ; and with the afternoon had come that pensive look
that settles upon a landscape when the light ceases to pour
down upon it directly from above. The voice of the wind,
too, had grown melancholy as it wandered through the great
ruined windows and stirred the sea-plants that had managed
to establish themselves in the inhospitable soil.

Bill Dawkins of course had run wild, scampering hither
and thither in breathless astonishment, poking his muddy
nose into dark passages, scrambling helter-skelter to the
top of a ruined staircase, where he would be seen stand-
ing with his comical alert-looking figure marked against
the sky, tail high in the air, head well raised, and in
his whole attitude an air of intelligent inquiry which
would have convulsed with laughter anybody to whom
animal life was a less serious affair than it was to Viola.
The dog looked as if he ought to be scanning the horizon
with a telescope to one eye.

Viola was just about to follow him up the steps, when
she was startled, and for the moment terror-stricken, by a
loud peal of laughter which rose above the ceaseless pulse-
beat of the waves in the rock-chasms round about. She
gave a low gasp and clutched a little tamarisk-bush beside
the staircase, for she had almost fallen. She listened

76

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

breathlessly. The laughter was renewed, and Viola now
heard several men’s voices, apparently coming from the
farthest part of the ruin. If she were discovered here,
these men might be angry with her for trespassing. Her
ideas were vague and full of fear ; the romantic strangeness
of the place, with its hollow subterranean sounds, excited
her imagination. Though prepared for almost anything,
however, it did not occur to her that Bill Dawkins’ scamper
to the top of the ruined staircase at that particular moment
was to determine the whole course of her fu-ture life ; but
so it proved !

CHAPTER VL

THE CUSTODIAN OF THE CASTLE,

Viola crouched lower and lower in her hiding-place, for
she fancied the voices were coming nearer. The tones
somewhat reassured her, for they were quiet and pleasant.

“ I should Y\\e, to know where the little beast comes from,”
one of the invisible beings remarked ; “ I never saw anything
to beat that attitude. It's not only human, it's classical.”

‘‘ Classical ? ” echoed a second voice, which Viola thought
not quite so pleasant as the former.

“ Our friend means that it possesses the attributes of a
class,” said a third voice, this one quite different in tone
and quality from the other two ; there was a slight touch
of cockney accent, and an evident struggle with the tempta-
tion to say >^attributes.

“ Quite so ; you always know what I mean, Foster,” said
the first voice ; “ that poodle has the manners of the highest
circles ; quite clear that he mingles in good society. I must
really introduce him to my cousin ; she would be charmed
with him.” ‘ • -

78

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

‘‘ Lady Clevedon is not without class-prejudices/’ the man
called Foster remarked in a judicial manner. ‘‘Women of
the upper ranks have much to contend with ; we must look
leniently upon their follies ; it is the part of the philosopher
to smile, not to rail, at human weakness. ’’

Viola thought this sounded promising for her. This
tolerant person, at any rate, would be on her side, if she
were found guilty of the human weakness of trespassing.

“We must not forget,” the philosopher pursued, “that
only a limited responsibility can be attached to the human
being in his present relations with the universe. Without
plunging into the vexed question of Free Will, which has
set so many thinkers by the ears, we must admit that our
freedom can only exist, if at all, in a certain very modified
degree. We are conscious of an ability to choose^ but our
choice is, after all, an affair of temperament, and our tem-
perament a matter of inherited inclinations, and so forth,
modified from infancy by outward conditions.”

“ We are not compelled to do things, only we must,”
some one interposed a little impatiently.

The philosopher laughed.

“Quite so, Mr. Dendraith; we are compelled by our-
selves; the ‘Ego’ constrains itself, and I don’t see how
we can logically retreat from that position.”

THE CUSTODIAN OF THE CASTLE,

79

“ Well, I for one ani quite prepared to do it //logically ! ”

This idea seemed to stun the philosopher, who made no
reply.

At the mention of the word Dendraith Viola’s heart
stopped beating. The memory of that visit to Upton
Court still rankled, and her hands clenched themselves
fiercely as she thought of it. Presently, to her horror and
surprise, the enemy came in sight, followed by his com-
panions. They could not see her, for she was hidden
behind the flight of steps.

They had strolled on till they came to one of the great
windows, and here they established themselves in a group,
Philip Dendraith sitting in the deep embrasure, digging out
weeds from between the stones with the end of his stick ;
Harry Lancaster leaning against the masonry with his head
thrown back ; while the philosopher, a small fair man with a
little face and big forehead, sat huddled together on a large
stone, amidst a tangle of weedy vegetation, the tips of his
fingers joined, and his head meditatively on one side.
His hands showed that he had been engaged in manual
work. He was pale, and spare ; and he wore a small, very
fair beard and moustache. His eyes were light blue and
exceedingly intelligent.

Against the background of gleaming sea the figure of

8o

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

Philip Dendraith, framed by the rough Norman window,
stood out very strikingly. Every line was strong and flow-
ing, and the face laid equal claims to admiration.

Yet, perfect as it was, it by no means lacked strength
or individuality, as handsome faces often do. There was
only too much strength in the thin delicate lips, and in
the square jaw which gave vigour to the face, without
heaviness. The eyes were rather small and close-set ;
keen in expression. Dark, sleek hair, closely cropped,
harmonised with a smooth, brown and colourless skin ;
a laugh or smile displayed a set of miraculously white
teeth, even and perfect as if they had been artificial. As
often happens, this last perfection gave a singularly cold
expression to the face ; after the first shock of admiration
(for it was nothing less), this became chillingly apparent,
but the eye still lingered on the chiselled outlines with a
sort of fascination. Philip Dendraith seldom smiled, but
wfiien he did the smile had always the same character. It
was steely and brilliant, with a lurking mockery not pleasant
to encounter. His mariners, young man as he was, were
very polished ; he was by instinct a courtier.

“ If the fellow were going to murder you,” Harry Lancaster
used to say, he would bow you into an easy-chair, so that
you might have it done comfortably.’’

THE CUSTODIAN OF THE CASTLE, 8i

It would have been hard to find two men more unlike
than Philip Dendraith and Harry Lancaster.

Cold, keen, self-reliant, fascinating, Philip compelled
admiration, and to certain natures his personality was
absolutely dazzling. Power of all kinds is full of attraction,
and power this young man possessed in no common degree.
Already he was beginning to exercise an almost boundless
influence over women, whose education — the potent, un-
conscious education of their daily lives — tends to exaggerate
in them the universal instinct to worship what is strong.

Harry Lancaster’s charm, curiously enough, lay partly in
the absence of certain qualities that made the other man so
attractive. He had^none of those subtle flatteries which
were so pleasant even when they could not be supposed to
proceed from real feeling, but he was genial, ready to help,
quick to foresee and avoid what might wound another’s
feelings; daring, nevertheless, in the expression of un-
popular opinion to the last extreme.

In Philip’s suavities there often lurked a hidden sting —
so well hidden that it could not be openly resented, yet full
of the bitter poison of a sneer.

It was in his nature to despise men and women, and to
rule them through their weakness for his own ends.

“As we were saying, then, before our friend’s inordinate

VOL. I.

F

82

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

laughter interrupted our cogitations,’^ the philosopher re-
marked, taking up the lost thread of conversation with his
usual pertinacity — “as we were saying, Realism as opposed
to Nominalism is doomed to extinction under the power-
ful ”

“ Paw,” suggested Philip.

“ Paw of Science ? ” said Caleb Foster dubiously. “ The
metaphor seems crude.”

“ But powerful, like the Paw,” said Philip, sending a
pebble spinning over the window-ledge into the sea.

“Science,” pursued Caleb, weighing his words, “is the
enemy of poetry and mysticism ” — — ' ‘ ^

“ I doubt that,” said Harry ; “ I think it has a poetry and
mysticism of its own.”

“ That point we must lay aside for after-discussion,”
returned the clear-headed Caleb quietly.

“ Better put that aside, certainly,” observed Philip.

“ Science views Nature as a vast concourse of atoms
constrained only by certain eternal vetos (if one may so
speak), and out of the general co-ordination of these
vetoed units arise the multiplex phenomena that we see
around us.”

Viola bent forward eagerly, trying hard to understand.

“The vetos may be of the simplest character, but how-

THE CUSTODIAN OF THE CASTLE,

83

ever simple and however few, a complex result must arise
from their grouping under the conditions. Given the
alphabet, we get a literature. There you have the doctrine
of Necessity in a nutshell.”

Philip turned his small eyes languidly on the speaker.

And — what then ? ” he asked.

What then ? ” echoed the philosopher. Having got
rid of misleading conceptions, philosophy migrates to new
pastures. We no longer speak of life as if it were some
outside mysterious influence that pours into dead matter
and transforms it ; we believe that there is no such inde-
pendent imponderable, but only different states of matter
arising from forces within itself.”

“And anything that goes on outside the pale of our
cognition } ” asked Philip, slightly raising his eye-

brows.

“ Such things,” said Harry, “ are, philosophically speak-
ing, not ‘ in Society ; ’ one doesn^t hear about them ; one
doesn’t call upon them ; they are not in our set.”

The philosopher seemed a little puzzled. He smiled a
melancholy smile and looked pensively out to sea.

Philip was still engaged in sending small stones spinning
into the void, and he had gradually worked himself so far
towards the outer edge that half his body appeared to be

84

THE WING OF A ZRAEL,

overhanging the sea, which lay immediately below the
window.

“ I say, youll very soon be ‘ not in our set ’ yourself if
you don't look out,” said Harry.

Philip laughed, and swung himself round, so that now
he was sitting with both legs over the farther edge of the
embrasure. He seemed to revel in the danger. Viola
turned cold as she saw him lean half out of the window
in the effort to descry a ship on the horizon.

‘‘Instantaneous death is not, strictly speaking, a calamity,”
observed the irrepressible philosopher; “the mind has no
time to dwell upon the idea of its own destruction. Pain,
mental or physical, is the sole misfortune that can befall a
man, and this is incompatible with unconsciousness.”

“Well, then, Foster, suppose you give me the pleasure
of treating you as I treat these pebbles ; let me flick you
dexterously into the ocean.”

But the philosopher laughed knowingly, and shook his
head.

“Reason is not our ruling attribute,” he said; “senti-
ment is the most powerful principle in the human
breast.”

“ Come out, will you ? ” cried Philip, apostrophising an
obstinate pebble which had wedged itself tightly in between

THE CUSTODIAN OF THE CASTLE,

85

two blocks of stone. I will have you out ; the thing
imagines it is going to beat me !

“ Have you never been beaten ? ’’ inquired Harry.

“No; nor do I intend to be, by man, woman, or child,”
Philip answered, with a screw of the lips as he at last forced
out and flung away the refractory pebble.

His manner gave one the impression that so he would
treat whomsoever should resist him. The mixture of in-
dolence and invincible determination that he displayed
was very singular.

Caleb Foster expressed an idea that was passing through
Harry’s mind when he said, disjointedly, as if thinking
aloud, “ Given with this temperament, irresponsible power,
absence of control — lessons of life artificially withheld —
result, a Nero.”

“Are you calling me a Nero?” asked Philip, with a
laugh. “Nothing like philosophy for frankness. What’s
my sin ? ”

“Ask your conscience,” returned Caleb. “/ know of
none.”

“ My conscience has struck work,” said Philip ; “ I gave
it so much to do that I tired it out.”

Caleb gave a thoughtful nod.

“ I believe that it may indeed become obscured by

86

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

over- exercise,” he said. “The simple human impulses of
truth and justice are, after all, our surest guides. Too
subtle thinking on moral questions makes egoists and
straw-splitters of us, and hands us over to the mercies
of our fallible judgments.”

“ And why not ? ” asked Harry.

He insisted — much to Viola’s consternation — that good-
ness and intelligence are truths identical, and that one of
them could never lag far behind the other.

“ Granted their close affinity,” said Caleb, “ but it does
not follow that the most reasonable man is also the most
moral. Morality is not evolved afresh in each human
being by a logical exercise. It is the result of a long
antecedent process of experiment which has embedded
itself, so to speak, in the human constitution, so that
morality is, as it were, reason preserved ”

“Apt to have a bad flavour, and to be sometimes
poisonous from the action of the tins,” added Harry.

The philosopher thought over this for some seconds,
with his head very much on one side.

Philip Dendraith had another definition of morality.

“ I speak from observation,” he said, “ and from that I
gather that it is immoral to be' found out. I can conceive
no other immorality.”

THE CUSTODIAN OF THE CASTLE.

87

“ Halloa ! here’s our friend the gentlemanly Poodle ! ”
exclaimed Harry, as that intelligent animal appeared in
sight.

Bill Dawkins paused in his headlong career, and stood
staring at the group.

“I wonder who your master is,” Harry continued, re-
doubling his blandishments; ‘‘perhaps the name is on the
collar. Hi! good dog — rats 1 1

Bill Dawkins pricked up his ears and bore down upon
the indicated spot. The philosopher found that his highly
developed forehead had become the destination of a lively
shower of earth and small stones, which the dog was
grubbing up, sniffing and snorting excitedly. Caleb quietly
removed his forehead out of range and stood looking on.

“If the beast hasn’t almost upset the Philosopher’s
Stone 1 ” exclaimed Harry.

Caleb opened his mouth to speak.

“We might find in these efforts a type of the Realist’s
struggle to lay hold of the abstraction in his own mind, an
eidolon which he translates into objective existence,” he
observed, calmly and persistently philosophic. But the
young men were too much occupied in cheering on the
deluded poodle to heed him.*

“No name on the collar,” said Harry; “but he’s clearly

88

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

a highly connected animal — well-bred too; and he’s be-
ginning to see it’s a hoax ; he’s giving it up in despair and
registering cynical vows not to the credit of mankind.”

“ Come here, animal,” said Philip.

Bill Dawkins’ nostrils moved inquiringly.

want some amusement, and I think you can give
it me.”

As Bill Dawkins did not obey, Philip laid hold of him
by the ear and compelled him to come ; much to the
creature’s indignation.

Bringing a piece of string from his pocket, the young man
then proceeded to tie the dog’s legs together diagonally;
his right front paw to his left hind paw, and the other
two in the same way.

The result, when he was set down again, was a series of
agitated stumbles and a state of mind simply frantic. The
sight seemed to afford Philip much joy ; he looked on and
laughed at the creature’s struggles.

“ This is a subtle and penetrating form of wit,” Harry
remarked, with a frown ; but Caleb Foster seemed amused
at the animal’s embarrassment, good-natured man though
he was.

‘‘ He’d make a good target,” remarked Philip, taking aim
at the poodle with a small stone, and following up with a

THE CUSTODIAN OF THE CASTLE.

89

second and a third in rapid succession. The last one hurt ;
for the dog gave a loud yelp, and Harry, flushing up, was
springing to the rescue, when an angry cry rang through the
air, and almost at the same instant the dog was encircled
by a pair of small arms, and hugged and caressed as even
that well-appreciated poodle had never been caressed in
his life before.

“ By the Lord Harry, it^s the little Sedley girl 1

CHAPTER VII.

MURDER.

Frantically Viola tore off the string that bound the
creature’s legs, and then turning fiercely to Philip, she said,
with quivering lips, white with passion, “ How dare you
ill-treat my dog? How dare you? You are a cruel,
wicked man, and I hate you ! ”

‘‘Well done, little virago,” said Philip, laughing. “Now,
tell one who has your welfare sincerely at heart, how did
you get here all by yourself ? ”

“ Why did you throw stones at Bill Dawkins? You are
cruel— ^you are wicked ; I think you are Satan.”

There was a shout of laughter at this.

“Well, I /laz'e had two good compliments this after-
noon I ” Philip exclaimed, still laughing ; “ to be called
Nero and Satan within half-an-hour is something to re-
member oneself by ! ”

“ Poor, good dog ! poor, poor dog ! ” cried the child,
almost in tears, and stooping again to caress him.

MURDER.

91

“Your dog is not much hurt, little girl,’’ said Harry
kindly. “See, he is wagging his tail quite cheerfully; he
knows it is all right.”

“ He always forgives very easily,” said Viola. “ I
wouldn’t forgive that man if I were he.”

“ Now, do you know, little lady, I believe you are mis-
taken,” said Philip, with one of his brilliant smiles ; “ I
wouldn’t mind betting that the time will come when
you would forgive me far greater offences than this one
against your poodle. You belong to the forgiving sex,
you know.”

“ No, I don’t,” cried Viola, fiercely.

“ Do you mean to say, for instance, that you haven’t for-
given me for kissing you that afternoon at our house ? You
were very angry at the time, but you are not angry about
that now — are you ? ”

Viola’s face was a study.

Philip threw back his head and laughed at the look of
helpless passion which made the child almost speechless.

“ There is some mettle here,” he said, addressing the
others ; “ a high-spirited young animal who would be worth
breaking in when she grows up. Women of this type love
their masters.”

“ I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” said Harry, as he bent

92

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

down and tried to soothe the excited little girl, and to find
out how she came to be here alone.

‘^Life,” said the philosopher, with amiable intent, “is
beset with inevitable disturbances of the mental equilibrium
(perhaps the child does not understand the word equilibrium
— let us therefore substitute balance). These, however, it
is possible to reduce to a minimum by a habit of mind
which — but I fear I fail to impress our little friend. No
matter. In early years the human being is the creature
of impulse ; reason has not yet ascended the throne. We
must be content to be the sport of circumstances. Are
you content to be the sport of circumstances, my good
child?”

Viola looked shy and shook her head.

“ The little woman is a treasure ! ” exclaimed Philip,
laughing. “ Now I want to make you say you forgive me,”
he went on, unexpectedly stooping down and lifting her
into the window embrasure, where he established himself in
his old perilous position, with Viola struggling in his arras.

“ I say, do look out,” cried Harry ; “ a mere breath
would send you into the sea.”

Philip treated these warnings with contempt.

“ Now, listen to me,” he said quietly, as he quelled
the child's struggles with a clever movement ; “ it is of

MURDER,

93

no use fighting, for I am stronger than you ; but I don’t
want to make you stay here against your will ; I want you
to stay willingly, and to say that you forgive me, and that
you like me very much.”

“ I hate you,” said Viola.

“ Oh ! no, you don’t,” cried Philip in a low, soft voice ;
“ you can’t hate a poor man who thinks you a nice, dear
little girl, and wants you to be fond of him. That wouldn’t
be fair, would it ? ”

Viola was' silent : he had struck the right chord.

“ If I had known the dog belonged to you, I wouldn’t
have tied his legs together or thrown stones at him ; —
(though they were very little stones, you know.) Now
won’t you forgive me if I say I am very sorry ? ”

“ No,” said Viola. Let me go.”

Philip gave a deep sigh.

“You pain me very much,” he said. “ What can a man
do when he has offended but say he is sorry and will
never do it again ? ”

“ Let me go,” repeated Viola.

“I say, Philip, you are teasing the child,” remonstrated
Harry.

“No, Pm not; I want to make amends to her, and see
if she has a nice disposition.”

94

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

“You want to experiment with your diabolical power,’’
muttered Harry.

“Now, Viola,” Philip continued (his voice was very
soothing and caressing), “ you see how repentant I am,
and how anxious I am to be forgiven ; I want you just
to say these words after me, and to give me a kiss of
pardon when you have said them. These are the words :
‘Philip Dendraith, though you have behaved very badly,
yet because you are fond of me, and repent, I forgive you,
and I kiss you in sign of pardon.’ When you have said
that I will release you.”

“ I won’t say it,” said Viola.

“ Oh ! but I am sure you will. You know that it would
be right and just to say it. . I know your mother teaches
you to be forgiving, and that you will forgive. See, I am so
sure of it that I open my arms and leave you at liberty.”

He released her, and waited with a smile to see what
she would do. She stared at him in a dazed manner.
His arguments had bewildered her ; she felt that she had
been trusted, and that it would be dishonourable to betray
the trust ; and yet — and yet the man had no right to inter-
fere with her liberty. There was a vague sense that his
seemingly generous confidence had something fraudulent in
it, though it placed him in a becoming light.

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95

A look of pain crossed the child’s face, from her
certainty of this, and her utter inability to put it into
words. Few people know how cruelly children often suffer
from this inequality in their powers of apprehension and
expression.

“ It’s not fair,” was all she could say. However, Philip
had so far gained his point that she did not take advantage
of her freedom to leave her tormentor ; she only shrank
away as far as she could, and sat with her head pressed
against the stonework of the window.

The partial victory made Philip’s eyes glisten ; it was
delicious to him to use his power, and he already regarded
Viola as an adversary worthy of his mettle, child though
she was.

Harry, thinking she was reconciled to the situation,
abandoned thoughts of interference, and Philip, with much
tact, forbore to press his advantage. He began to talk
about impersonal matters, cleverly spinning stories on
the slenderest thread of suggestion, and so much did he
interest the child that she forgot who was speaking, and
forgetting that, forgot to be angry.

Philip smiled, and glanced over his shoulder at his
companions.

‘‘ The forgiving sex ! ”

96

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

“Tell me some more, please,” said Viola, in a dreamy
tone.

“Once upon a time,” Philip went on obediently, “this
old castle stood six miles inland, before the sea bit its way
up to it and bombarded it as it is doing now. At that
time it was one of the finest castles in England, and the
barons who owned it were very powerful. I fear they
were rather a quarrelsome lot; we hear of them having
endless rows with other nobles, and one of them, not
content with his own wife, must needs take away the wife
of one of his neighbours ; and the neighbour was annoyed
about it, and challenged him to single combat, and they
hacked at one another for a whole afternoon in plate
armour (electro-plate, you know, not real silver). It was
a dreadful scene.”

“ And what happened ? ” asked Viola breathlessly.

“Well, the other baron ran his lance through Lord
Dendraith’s arm, and he said, ‘A hit, a very palpable
hit;’ but the baron, putting his lance in his left hand,
came on again, swearing diabolically, and this time he
unhorsed my ancestor and smashed in his helmet, and
then he gave him a deep wound in the leg, and soon
the tilting-ring was swimming in gore, for the two men
were both wounded. The bystanders noticed that it

MURDER.

97

was very blue in colour, the barons being both of noble
blood. But in spite of their wounds they swore^they
wouldn’t give in, and up sprang Lord Dendraith on to
his horse, and up sprang Lord Burleigh on to his,
and the clang of their armour when the lances came
down upon it could be heard within a radius of fifteen
miles. The people at that . distance took it for the
sound of threshing - flails in the vicinity, and were not
interested.’’

“And then?” said Viola.

“ Then,” continued Philip, “ the battle raged so fiercely
that even the fierce members of the Dendraith family were
seen to tremble ; the plumes of their helmets actually
quivered, and a murmur of rustling feathers ran round
the crowded ring, when for a second, there was a pause
in the combat. The blows were falling so fast now that
there was nothing to be seen but a sort of blurr in the
air in the path of the flashing lances.”

“ Oh ! ” exclaimed Viola, horror-stricken.

“ ‘ By Heaven ! I swear I will fight thee to the death ! ’
roared Lord Burleigh.

“ ‘ The devil be my witness, I will follow thee to hell ! ’
bellowed Lord Dendraith.

“ And so they fell to with fresh vigour. The two men

VOL. I. G

98

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

were very equally matched, and when one inflicted a
woufid, the other retaliated with an exactly corresponding
injury; when one chopped off a particular portion of his
enemy, the other chose the same portion and lopped it
off likewise; so that they worked each other gradually
down, and it seemed as if they were going to finish the
fight with the mere fragmentary remains of what were
once exceedingly fine men.

When at last each had driven his lance into the
other’s right lung and unhorsed him, the bystanders in-
terfered, and suggested that the noble barons having
already lost several limbs, besides cracking their skulls,
and mutually causing their teeth (with a few not-worth-
mentioning exceptions) to strew the ground, they might
consider their honour satisfied ; especially as their present *
plight rendered further fighting highly unsuitable.

“ But the furious barons would not hear of it ; they
declared they had never felt better in their lives, and with
a violent effort they dragged themselves to their feet (they
had now only two between them), and each with his dying
breath dealt the other a death-blow. And that was the
famous combat between Lord Dendraith and the Lord
of Burleigh,” concluded Philip.

‘‘ Is that the end ? ” asked Viola. •

MURDER,

99

‘‘ Yes j though I may mention that the widows shortly
afterwards married again.”

Viola remained silent and thoughtful ; the tragic finish
of the tale weighed upon her.

“One can see where you get your absurd obstinacy
from,” said Harry.

“ I don’t own to being obstinate,” returned Philip
“ obstinacy is the dullard’s quality. I have tried to avoid
it, as I fancy it is in the Dendraith race.”

“ Who were anything but dullards,” Caleb threw in.

Philip bowed.

“They improved towards later times,” he said. “Some
foreign blood came into the family, and, rather curiously,
it developed on a substratum of the old stubborn, stupid
spirit a subtlety almost Italian. Andrew, who repaired
part of the castle and built the house, combined these
qualities very strikingly. He murdered his sweetheart,
you know, little lady,” Philip went on, seeing that Viola
was interested, “because he found that she liked another
man better than she liked him, and no Dendraith could
stand that. He offered her his love, and she coquetted a
little with him for a time, and then ”

“ What is coquetted ? ” asked Viola.

“Well, she wouldn’t say plainly whether she liked him

lOO

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

or not ; but he swore that she should be his, or no other
man should have her. Unluckily, he found she had
a more favoured lover, and then and there, without fore-
sight or consideration, he stabbed her. The other more
cunning side of his character show^ed itself afterwards in
his clever manner of eluding detection for years. The
truth never came out till he told it himself on his death-
bed. It is said, of course, that the ghost of the murdered
lady haunts the castle to this day.’’

“ Is this your castle ? ” asked Viola, after a long and
thoughtful pause.

‘‘No, it is my father’s at present; but. he is going to
give it me as soon as I marry. It used to be a fine place,
and it can be made so again. So you see, Viola, I am
worth making friends with. Perhaps when you grow up,
if you are good, I will marry you ! What do you say to
that ? ”

“ I don’t want to marry you,” said Viola, her old resist-
ing spirit roused again.

“ What ! not after all the nice stories I have told you ? ”

“ No,” said Viola curtly.

“ Not to become mistress of the castle, and to have that
big house and garden for your own, and some beautiful
' diamonds that I would give you ? ”

MURDER,

lOI

She shook her head.

“ This is not like the sex,” Philip observed, with a laugh.
“Think how nice it would be to have a big house all
to yourself, and diamonds, and a husband who would tell
you stories whenever you asked him ! The luxury of that
can scarcely be overrated. You had better think seriously
of this matter before you refuse me ; there will be a great
many others only too delighted to have a chance of all
these good things.”

“ Husbands with a turn for narrative being proverbially
popular,” Harry threw in.

“ And husbands with a turn for diamonds still more
so,” Philip added. “I am ^ sure that Viola will see these
things more wisely as she grows older. So confident am
I of it, in fact, that I intend to regard her from this time
forth as my little betrothed ”

Philip laughed at the flash that came into the child’s
eyes. Presently he went on in a coaxing tone : “Now,
Viola, you are going to be nice and kind, and say you are
fond of me, and give me a kiss, aren’t you ? Remember,
I let you go free when I might easily have kept you prisoner
all this time.”

“ I think your arms would have ached by now if you
had^^ observed Caleb, with a chuckle.

102

THE WING OF A ZR A EL.

Viola had drawn herself together as if preparing to spring
to the ground and escape, but Philip quickly frustrated her
design. She was still untrammelled, but a strong arm
across the window barred the egress.

She tried to push it away, but she might as well have
tried to break down the Norman stonework against which
the large well-formed hand was resting. She beat it angrily
with her clenched fists.

“ Oh ! that's naughty ! ” cried Philip, much amused. •
“ Supposing you were to hurt me ? "

‘‘ I want to 1 ”

Viola continued to strike the hand and arm with all
her might. «

“ Now, you know, there is but one cure for this sort of
thing,” said Philip, with a brilliant smile.

Relaxing the tension of the obnoxious arm, he placed
it round the child, and drew her towards him, saying that
he must give her a, mixed kiss, combining the ideas of
punishment and betrothal.

‘‘ Upon my word, you will be over that precipice if you
don't look out ! '' warned Harry again.

“ Pooh ! I'm all right,'' said Philip impatiently.

Expecting Viola to struggle away from his clutches, he
had adjusted his attitude accordingly, but instead of this

MURDER.

103

she flung herself wildly upon him with rage-begotten
strength, and before he could recover from the shock, in
his dangerous position, he had completely lost his balance.
The whole thing was over in an instant.

‘‘ Good God ! he's gone ! ” exclaimed Harry, spring-
ing into the embrasure with one bound, followed by
Caleb.

The two men looked in each other's white faces for a
second of awful silence.

Harry leant back against the stonework with a breath-
less groan, drawing his hand across his brow.

He was on the very spot where, a second ago, Philip had
been lolling in his indolent way, defying the danger that
lay within an inch of him, the danger that Harry had
warned him against in vain.

The unceasing lapping of the waves on the cliff below
made the moment absolutely ghastly. It was like the
licking of the lips of some animal that has just devoured
his victim.

“ What's to be done ? He carUt be killed I " cried Harry
at last. It seemed incredible. Caleb laid his arm round
the young man's shoulders, and together they peered over
the verge. White and pitiless the cliff dropped dizzily to
the sea. Philip, was an athlete and a splendid climber,

104-

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

but who could keep footing on such a place as this ? The
only hopeful sign was, that they saw nothing of the body.
The cliff was not perpendicular; that gave another faint
consolation. They had forgotten all about Viola in the
horror of the moment, but the sound of low passionate
sobbing recalled her presence to their minds.

“ I have killed him ; I have killed him,” she moaned in
accents so utterly heartbroken, that they sent a horrified
thrill through the hearts of her companions. There was
something so grief-experienced in the despair of the child ;
almost it seemed as if she were bewailing the inevitable
accomplishment of a foreknown doom. She might have
been the heroine of some Greek tragedy crying “ at a?” at
the fulfilment of her fate,

Harry tried to soothe her.

Oh ! find him, find him : he is not killed ; he cannot be
killed,” she wailed. “ Come and find him ; come and find
him.’’

Feverishly she took Harry’s hand to lead him away.

“ It was my fault ; I have killed him. Come — come ! ”
In pursuit of a most forlorn hope the three set out to-
gether, under Caleb’s guidance, he being familiar with the
cliffs, and able to lead them by comparatively easy descents
to the foot of the rock. Viola was most anxious to go all

MURDER,

105

the way, but Harry told her that, she would delay him
and Caleb in their search, and this alone induced her to
stay and watch from above.

Rough steps had been hewn out of the rock in places,
to enable people living in the castle to get down easily to
the sea, and these now proved of immense value, though
at best it was dangerous work, and very exciting. The
slightest slip would have been punished with death. Now
and then they had to take little jumps from ledge to ledge,
or to crawl on their hands and knees, clinging for dear life.
They stood still now and then to rest, and to shout at the
top of their voices in’ case Philip, by some miracle, had been
saved and might answer them. Ent no answer came.

“ It does not seem to me quite impossible that he should
have broken his fall by means of some of these inequalities
in the side of the cliff. The absolute smoothness vanishes
on closer acquaintance.’’

It was Caleb who spoke.

“ And there is an inclined plane here,” Harry observed ;
‘‘steep, indeed, but one’s momentum would be checked in
striking it.”

“ Certainly ; and Philip is the man to have that good
fortune, if any man could have it ; and to take advantage
of it.”

io6

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

Cheering themselves with these suppositions, they slowly
continued their journey. The sun was sinking, and sent a
fiery line of gold across the water, dazzling them with its
brilliancy, and making their difficult task more difficult
still. The gulls were wheeling overhead, congregating
and settling on the waters with beautiful airy movements.
It made the two men feel giddy to look at them. Glancing
towards the fatal window, whither Viola had returned to
sit tremulously watching, it struck Harry that if he and
Caleb were both to be killed, the child would be with-
out a protector. ’ Standing on a narrow ledge of rock,
he shouted up to her, ‘‘Throw down a small stone if
you hear me.^’

A pebble came straight as a plummet-line from the
window, striking the inclined plane, bounding up and
taking a curved path thence into the sea, which it entered
with a faint little plump.

“ If we should not return, go at once to the coastguard
station — it's not two hundred yards off ; tell them who you
are ; ask them to take care of you for the night, and send a
message to your home that you are safe. Another stone
if you hear ; two stones if only partly.”

Two stones came down and behaved in the same manner
as before. The advice- was repeated, and then a single

MURDER,

107

stone fell in token of understanding. With an encouraging
wave of the hand, Harry pursued his perilous journey.
From above, the cliff had appeared smooth and un-
eventful, but now a thousand secrets betrayed themselves.
Caleb was working his way towards a part of the rock
that lay at present out of sight below the inclined plane.
Struck by the action of the pebble, it had occurred to him
that Philipps body might have followed the same route,
but being heavier in comparison with its momentum, would
not have described a parabola (as the philosopher put it to
himself), but would have fallen or slipped to the surface
immediately below. If here, by some good luck, there
were a resting-place, hope still remained. This idea Caleb
communicated to Harry, who checked an impulse to pass
on ‘ the encouraging view to Viola. It was a pity, he
thought, to rouse her hope on such slender grounds. The
search had by this time insensibly changed its character in
Harry^s eyes. He now regarded it partly as it affected the
mind of the little girl whose passionate action had caused
the mishap. Her remorse and horror had been terrible
to witness, and Harry felt that if Philip proved to be really
killed the shock to her might prove to be very dangerous
indeed. Her conduct that afternoon had showed him of
what sort of stuff she was made.

io8

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

This was a nature, like a deep sea, capable of profound
disturbances. At that time Harry had not learnt that the
nature with material for such storms has generally within
it also a strange cohesion and power of endurance which
enable it to stand together through crises that would
seem more than enough to shatter the most firmly knit
intellect.

“Look out,” Caleb called back to his companion, as
a stone rolled down the slope; “you are coming to an
awkward place now.”

Harry found that he stood on a projecting ledge of rock,
where below him for about twenty feet there was no further
resting-place; to the left rose a buttress of rock; to the
right the ledge shelved away to nothing, the slight foothold
dwindling till it disappeared altogether.

“ How in the name of wonder did you get past here ? ”
he called to Caleb.

“ I climbed up, and got round the projection on the other
side ; but the bit of stone I got up by gave way under
my feet, and I fear you will have to stay where you are
for the present.”

As this fact was borne in upon him, Harry cursed his ill
luck. The loosened flint that had enabled Caleb to climb
the escarpment lay resting on the slope of rock below him

MURDER.

log

twenty feet. The prisoner looked anxiously at the sun.
Nothing could be done when the darkness came on, and
if it should overtake him he would have to stay here all
night, unable to lie down, scarcely able to turn, — it was not
a pleasant prospect.

‘‘ I can’t possibly get out of this position without help,”
he called out ; “ but how are you getting on ? ”

I am working my way to the place I told you of ;
I shall soon be there. If I find him, I will shout to you ;
and we can consult as to what is to be done. Perhaps the
little girl could find you a rope somewhere about the house.
There is one in my kitchen, do what you can as to that ;
meanwhile I will not forget you. The sun won’t be down
for another two hours yet.”

With these words Caleb passed entirely out of sight,
and Harry was left to solitude and his own reflections.

He shouted up to Viola above, and was answered by a
tiny pebble.

“ We want a rope,” he called up. “ Will you go to
Caleb’s house and bring one that you will find there in the
kitchen? His house is in the castle keep; it has been
repaired and made into a dwelling for him; it stands
at the end of the castle, right out to sea — you can’t
mistake it.”

no

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

“ I understand/’ was signalled back in pebble language.

Harry knew that the child’s anxious misery would be
relieved by action, and, besides, her help might be very
valuable. The thought of her strange and terrible situation
at this moment recurred to him with increasing insistence.
Philip Dendraith had been to Harry only a newly-made
acquaintance, and his accident affected him little more
than if it had be-fallen a total stranger. There was no
personal grief in his heart, and he was therefore free to
speculate on the feelings of one more tragically interested.
He was beginning to feel anxious about her, for he doubted
if she could be persuaded to leave the spot until Philip had
been found, and there was the sun racing towards the
horizon, and still Caleb gave no sign.

Everything depended upon him.

•Viola found the rope, and as soon as she returned
Harry directed her to go to the coastguard station for help.
She was to ask to have the news forwarded to the Manor-
House and Upton Court, and also to bring some brandy.
Pebbles came down in token of understanding, and the
little figure disappeared from the window. Harry found
himself alone in the hushful twilight.

It seemed as if Nature were doing her utmost to soothe
his anxieties and whisper messages of peace in his ears.

MURDER.

Ill

Long lines of cloud and sea swept serenely from coast to
distant coast; the sunset lights were rich and glowing,
promising a glorious morrow; while at the cliffs foot the
glossy waters lapped with a soft sea-sound that might have
.lulled the frenzy of a madman’s dream.

Harry felt the influences steal into his heart, and as the
glow grew fainter in the sky, and the cold evening light —
almost electric in its still lustre — crept over the waters, he
realised with a start that the last quarter of an hour had
been one of the happiest of his life. Full of emotions, of
delicious insights and longings, it had brought to him,
upon the inflowing tide of heightened consciousness, a
thrilling sense of the glory and the sweetness of exist-
ence.

Then for the first time he fully realised the tragedy that
had occurred that afternoon ; a strong fresh life hurried
perhaps into dark unconsciousness, with all its infinite
possibilities blotted out.

Away pale Philosophy,” which would persuade the life-
intoxicated soul that death is no calamity ! Death is the
great calamity towards which our sins and our errors are
for ever thrusting us. Life — full, rich, wide-spreading life —
the one great universal Good, in whose delicious ocean all
right and healthy things in heaven and earth are steeped

I 12

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

till the sweet waters steal in and fill them through and
through. Such was Harry Lancasters present creed.

A shout broke the stillness.

‘‘ I have found him ! ’’

“Alive?”

“ Don’t know ; he does not move ; — I am trying experi-
ments.”

It was maddening to be imprisoned here when help was
so much needed ! Harry, for the hundredth time, tried to
persuade himself that he could escape by some deed of

daring, but had to own that none but suicidal attempts

*

were possible. He told Caleb that Viola must shortly
return with help.

“That’s lucky!” shouted the philosopher. “I believe
he is alive, though he has been severely knocked about ;
he is stunned, but he seems to me to breathe still faintly.
It is an absolute miracle 1 I wish I had some brandy.

When the little girl returns with help ”

“ Ah I well done, well done 1 Here she is ! — and the
coastguardsman himself to the rescue.”

“Thank Heaven ! ” exclaimed Caleb. “Come to me as
soon as you can. No time to be lost.”

Harry shouted up to the man to let down the brandy
and to attach the rope firmly somewhere above. In a few

MURDER,

IT3

seconds he ^^had the joy of seeing a quaint-looking flask
sliding down the cliff towards him. Quickly detaching the
flask, he put it* in his pocket, and seizing the rope, swung
himself down obliquely, the coastguardsman moving it
from time to time along the castle wall. It was not long
before he had scrambled almost to the foot of the cliff,
where he found Caleb beside the motionless body of
Philip.

Harry sprang to his side and handed him the brandy
without a word.

‘‘This may save him,’^ said Caleb, ^as he raised the
body in his arms and administered the life-draught.
“Now, there is no time to lose; he must be moved to
my house at once, while he is unconscious ; after he
revives the pain would retard us. His left leg is broken,
I fear, and I dare say that is not the only injury, poor
fellow ! You take his feet. I’ll take his head, and for-
ward.”

Caleb, giving the word of command, led the way to the
beach, the two men carrying the burden for about a quarter
of a mile over the shingle, and then up by a rough but
moderately easy ascent, at a point where the cliffs were less
steep and less lofty. . They had perforce to pause for breath
now and again, and then the dose of brandy was repeated.

VOL. I. H

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

114

At the second pause a faint movement, showing that Philip
was still alive, was the signal for moving on at a still more
rapid rate.

The distance seemed very great, for Philip was no light
burden, and their wishes so far outstripped their powers
that progress appeared slow indeed.

‘‘Whafs that?” said Harry, peering through the dusk.
“I think I see two figures coming towards us.”

He was right. A few minutes brought them face to face
with Viola and the good-natured coastguardsman, who had
guessed what the others had done, and come on to lend a
hand. He turned Harry off altogether, and insisted on
taking his place till he had ^‘got the wind into his sails
again,” after which Caleb was subjected to a similar process
of nautical recuperation.

Before Viola's white lips had time to frame the ques-
tion, “Is he alive?” Harry had communicated the fact
of Philip's almost miraculous escape.

The blood ebbed away from her face for a moment, and
then came rushing back again in a great tumult. She said
not a word, but kept close beside Philip, watching his still
face intently.

“Did you get a message sent to your mother?” Harry
inquired.

MURDER.

115

“Yes; I said I was quite safe, and that you had told me
what to do, and were taking care of me. Also I asked
her to send on the news, as you told me.’’

Caleb’s hermitage at the far end of the castle was
a strange, romantic little dwelling, patched together by
his own hands out of the ruined keep; the arrow-holes
having been widened into windows, while the old spiral
staircase still served the ingenious philosopher as a
means of reaching his little bedroom, where every night
he was lulled to sleep by the ceaseless music of the
waves. From this haven of repose the mattress and
blankets were brought down to the kitchen, where a
good fire was burning; Philip was laid upon the bed
close to the hearth, and then Caleb proceeded to apply
all his wide and accurate knowledge to the task before
him.

While engaged in arduous efforts to restore the lost
animation, he was giving explicit directions to his col-
leagues to assist him, and to collect various things that
he required in order to set the broken leg and bind up
the wounds.

“He is badly hurt,” said Caleb; “but if he lives,
he will be none the worse for this, if I am not much
mistaken.”

ii6

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

“ Oh, he’ll live all right,” said the coastguardsman,
seeing, with singular quickness, that Viola turned white at
the philosopher’s “There ! I saw a quiver of the eye-

lid. You are breathing your own life into him, Mr. Foster ;
— he must come round. Don’t you never be afraid, little
’un,” he added, patting Viola on the head; “the young
gentleman’ll live to be a sorrow to his parents for many a
long day yet ! You mark my words.”

The coastguardsman’s prophecy proved true. Caleb,
with the assistance of his companions, did, after much
effort, succeed in fanning t?he dim little spark of life to a
feeble but certain flame.

• Philip opened his eyes, gave a sigh, and sank heavily
back on the pillows.

“The leg must be set,” said Caleb. “Happily I know
how to do it. Now I want you all to be very intelligent,”
he said, as he bent down to perform the operation;
“upon my skill . and the general good management of the
affair hangs the issue of a life-time. If I do not set it
with perfect accuracy one leg will be shorter than the
other.”

There was an anxious silence in the little room as the
philosopher, with skilful, decided movements set about the
momentous task.

MURDER.

117

Philip was by this time vaguely conscious of his sur-
roundings, but too weak to ask any questions. Perhaps
his rapid mind had taken in the facts without assistance.
He very much surprised the bystanders by saying in a
weak but clear voice, ‘^Are you going to set my leg,
Foster?”

‘‘ Yes ; we can’t wait for a doctor. I have done it before
— trust to me.”

Almost as he spoke he wrenched the parts into position,
and Philip gave a groan.

‘‘The worst is over,” Cal^b said cheerfully; “brace
yourself for another wrench, and then the deed is
done.”

This time there was only a laboured drawing of the
breath from the patient, and then the limb was bound to
a bar of wood by means of bands made, on the spur of the
moment, out of cloths and towels, and the patient was told
that for the present he would be left in peace.

Very quietly and rapidly Caleb made arrangements for
the night. The coastguardsman was thanked for his
services and assured that no further help was needed.
Caleb and Harry would take turns in the night-watch,
while Viola could go to bed in the room sanctified by
philosophic slumbers, and 'dream that she was a mer-

ii8

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

maid playing with her own tail in the depth of the green

ean.

»

So said Harry, recovering already from the afternoon’s
strain of anxiety and fatigue.

Caleb silenced at once Viola’s pleading to be allowed to
sit up and watch the patient. Not to-night, he said, or she
would be another patient on his hands by the morrow, and
then how could Philip be properly nursed?

“Say good-night to him, my little friend,” said Caleb
^kindly, “and then I’ll take you upstairs.”

The child went up to the bed and knelt down by Philip’s
side. In spite of manful efforts, the tears welled up into
her eyes, but she made no sound. She seemed to be
struggling with herself; her lips moved. Then suddenly
she bent forward, uttering Philip’s name, and as she bade
him good-night she kissed him on the brow.

“ I am so sorry ; I am so very sorry ! ”

Philip, weak as he was, gave a slight laugh. The after-
noon’s event, nearly fatal though it had been, amused
him.

“You almost did for me, little one,” he said, “but it’s
all right, and you didn’t mean to do it, you know.”

Viola turned abruptly away from the bedside, and Caleb,
taking her in his arms, carried her tenderly up the dark

MURDER,

119

winding staircase to the strange little room, through whose
lozenge-paned windows a faint moon was tracing diamond
patterns on the bare floor.

“You won’t be frightened here, will you?” Caleb asked.
“ Mr. Lancaster and I are in the room below, and should
hear you in a minute if you called.”

“ I shall not be frightened,” said Viola.

Yet a thrill of terror went through her when Caleb,
having done all he could think of for her comfort, shut the
door and left her alone. ’ . «-•

The excitement of the day had unstrung her nerves, and
the strangeness of the place filled her with alarm.

But it was not this that most disturbed her. All minor
fears were lost in the terror of one secret and horrible
thought; a memory which had made the very sunshine
seem hateful, and now haunted the darkness with faces
so hideous in their mockery that the child grew well-
nigh distraught.

“ We see ; we know,” said the faces, and then they
laughed and mocked, till Viola, falling on her knees beside
the window, prayed as she had never prayed in her life
before. The face of the earth was changed to her since
that afternoon ; no prayer, no forgiveness, could restore
to the sea and sky their friendly benignity. That was all

120

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

gone, and in its stead were terrible accusations and sinister
smiles and laughter. That she herself had altered did not
occur to her ; she was the same Viola, capable always of
the crime that she had this day committed ; capable always
of — she shrank frantically from the horrible word.

As a man fighting with some wild beast for dear life,
this child wrestled, in the loneliness of that little sea-
haunted chamber, with a demon born within her own
consciousness, who assailed her without pause or mercy
through all the waking hours of that dreadful night. It
seemed as if this Creature — for living form the unspeakable
Idea actually took in her distraught imagination — were
devouring her inch by inch, her and all that she possessed.
Her childhood shrivelled up in the blast of his hot breath;
her innocence, her childish dreams, her ignorance of the
deepest gulfs of human misery. The gates of the great
Darkness were opened to her, and she could already see,
stretching far away, the dim, woeful plains and midnight
mountains in whose black chasms human souls lay rent
and bleeding. The air was heavy with sighing and
lamentation.

Upon how many scenes of human agony had those old
.stones looked down, while the sea sung its eternal requiem
to hope and sweet desires? Yet never, perhaps, had they

MURDER.

I2I

•witnessed a struggle more terrible than the succourless
soul-travail of this solitary child— a soul battling in the
darkness with the image of a great crime, warding off with
vain and desperate efforts the memory of a moment’s flash
of insane fury, — that moment, which had blazed out upon
the very sunshine in hues of flame, fierce and crimsoned
with the wild image of — Murder I

CHAPTER VIIL

A SYMPOSIUM,

The news of Philip’s accident brought, as Harry said, ‘‘a
large and fashionable circle” to Caleb’s little Hermitage.
Mrs. Sedley drove over early in her solemn old carriage
to fetch her daughter and inquire for Philip. Aunt
Augusta” and her husband also trundled across country
in their more lively vehicle, but delayed their visit philo-
sophically till the afternoon.

Far from philosophic were the fond parents of Philip,
who arrived breathless with a captive doctor at an unearthly
hour in the morning, and rushed to their son’s bedside
with a thousand exclamatory questions.

The examination of the injured leg by the doctor was
followed by the cheering announcement that it had been
perfectly well set, and that with proper precautions there
was no reason to fear any permanent injury.

Viola looked on and listened in the deepest anxiety.
She shrank guiltily away from Philip’s parents, and answered

A SYMPOSIUM,

123

only by a deep flush when Sir Philip said to her, in rather
a severe tone, hope this will be a lesson to you not
to give way to temper, my child ; if it hadn’t been for my
son’s marvellous strength and presence of mind, he would
have certainly been killed.”

“ Indeed, yes,” said Lady Dendraith, shaking her head ;
‘‘passion is a dreadful thing, and always leads to trouble.”

There was something ludicrous, if Viola could have seen
it, in this plump, well-to-do lady moralising about the evil
results of passion; but the child was inaccessible to all
ideas of the ludicrous just now; indeed at no time was
she very keenly alive to the humorous side of things.

Reluctantly she had to leave the Hermitage' and go home
with her mother, who promised that she should come and
see the invalid as often as the doctor would permit.

Mrs. Sedley did not say a word of reproach to her
daughter for her disobedience ; she felt that the child had
been already severely punished, though she little guessed
how severely.

The next time that Viola saw Philip he was looking as
strong as ever, and complaining bitterly of the restraint
still imposed upon him.

“The doctor says I shall walk again as well as ever, for
which all praise to ‘ mon cher philosopher and the rest of you.

124

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

Lancaster here behaved like a Trojan. As to the coast-
guardsman, he is a true Briton ! And Viola — what shall
I say of her? Well, she did her very best to make up
for pitching me over the cliff in that spirited manner !
I can^t get over the idea of this mite having actually
brought me to death’s door ! It is really splendid. She
will be a fascinating woman when she grows up. It isn’t
the quiet nondescript women that take one’s heart by
storm ; what we love is life and passion.”

“Yes, in other men’s wives,” said Harry. “In the East,
when a woman marries, her father presents her with a
sword, which is the symbol of her liberty, and this sword
she is expected at once to transfer to the bridegroom,
who holds it over her head, making her pass under it as
a sign that she promises to be henceforth subject unto
him. Whatever is powerful a'nd brilliant we either admire
or hate. I leave you to draw your own inferences.”

“ Thank you,” said Philip, “ we will.”

“And to assist you in the effort,” Harry added, “let
me repeat a significant remark which I once heard a
fellow make about two sisters : the elder, he said, was the
girl to fall in love' with, the younger the girl to marry.
I expect the woman of the nineteenth century is going
to make hay of our cherished institutions.”

A SYMPOSIUM.

125

Philip raised his eyebrows.

“ Do you really think that the great, badly-dressed old
sheet-anchor : our uninteresting but valuable bourgeoisie, is
going to stand any nonsense about its institutions ? Donk
imagine it for a moment. The more musty and fusty they
are, the more passionately they will be clung to ! ”

Harry smiled.

‘‘ I suppose if our existence were made a little less dull
and uncomfortable, the national Bulwark would think we
had come to terms wdth the Evil One himself ! Being tied
hand and foot like a Gulliver, and generally ill-treated,
gives us a sense of moral safeness, and is wonderfully con-
ducive. to the serenity of the average conscience. The
‘ badly dressed sheet-anchor ’ (a singulai figure, by the way)
is a trifle thick-headed ; we must calculate on that.’’

Of such conversations was Viola now often the puzzled
hearer, for where Caleb was, there, to a dead certainty, dis-
cussion would be also. Both Harry and Philip expressed
unbounded amazement that he had ceased discoursing
learnedly during the time of the accident. That he had not
then insisted strenuously on the non-calamitous nature of
death was regarded by the two young men as an evidence
of singular moderation. His way of treating Viola was
a source of perpetual amusement to them. Do what he

126

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

would, poor man ! he found it impossible to project him-
self into the consciousness of a being who did not under-
stand the nature of a syllogism, and (if Harry was to be
believed) he always addressed Viola with deep respect
in the language of “ pure reason.’’ That young man used
to return to Clevedon after a visit to the Hermitage, and
amuse his cousin by describing how Caleb in moments
of close-knit argument had turned to Viola with some
such remark as, “To this you will at once reply that
Kant regards our religious beliefs as either statutory^
that is, arbitrarily revealed, or 7noral^ that is, connected
with the consciousness of their necessity and knowable
a priorV^

This, no doubt, was one of Harry’s exaggerations, but the
story was not destitute of foundation.

Viola took a keen interest in Kant ; why, Harry never
could understand. He did not realise the natural avidity
with which a starved intelligence absorbs any fresh idea,
however unattractive. Mrs. Sedley’s careful selection of
books for her daughter’s reading, had the result of making
the child eager for mental food of some other flavour ; it
mattered little what the food might be, so long only as it
was quite unlike the severely wholesome diet on which she
had been monotonously reared.

A SYMPOSIUM.

127

Besides being introduced to Kant, whom she found a
pleasant and intelligent person, Viola made the acquaint-
ance of Socrates, or Mr. Socrates, as Philip insisted he must
be called, on the ground that “ familiarity breeds contempt.’^
Viola was indignant at the injustice of the treatment
he received at the hands of his countrymen; she made
him into a hero, and regarded all his utterances as in-
spired. Harry shocked her greatly by saying, “ Well, after
all, you know, he is distinctly the greatest bore on record.

. We should never endure such an old proser now ! Think
of the way he nagged at those long-suffering people in the
Dialogues I I don’t wonder that the Athenians resorted in
despair to hemlock. As for Xantippe, poor woman ! I have
always had the deepest sympathy for her. I am certain
the man deranged a naturally fine intellect, and destroyed
the temper of an angel.”

Poor Viola ! she scarcely knew what to believe ! The
mixture of jest and earnest which ran like tangled threads
through the whole conversation was most confusing to her.
She was utterly unaccustomed to lights and shades of
thought, or to quick changes of mental attitude. The three
men into whose society she was now thrown opened up a
new world of ideas, delightful but bewildering. Caleb’s
position in the group did not puzzle her as it would have

128

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

puzzled an older person, but she was interested to learn
that this amazing and indefatigable scholar — battening on
the literature of second-hand bookstalls — had been dis-
covered by Harry Lancaster in London in a state of terrible
privation ; that a friendship had sprung up between the
two men, and that, finally, Caleb had been installed by
Sir Philip at the ruin, of which he was now custodian,
keeping it from falling into utter decay, while he took
charge of the stables, outbuildings, and gardens belonging
to the empty house.

Sometimes Caleb would propose to make the meeting
into a genuine symposium, setting glasses on the table
and bringing out a bottle of home-made wine, presented to
him, as he informed the company, by his amiable friend
Lady Dendraith, and made by her own kind hands.

It was an incongruous group, with an incongruous back-
ground, of which Philip, on his couch in Caleb’s picturesque
kitchen, formed the central figure.

The shadows and sombre colouring threw the four faces
into relief. The splerididly handsome features of the invalid
formed a fine nucleus to the picture, and Viola’s pale ques-
tioning face, with its strange melancholy, seemed to corre-
spond to that note of sadness that can be caught in all
things human, if we listen for a moment, ever so carelessly.

A SYMPOSIUM.

129

The eagerness with which she waited on Philip was
touching, even to those who did not know her secret ; to
an onlooker who had guessed that soul-corroding trouble,
the whole scene would have seemed no less than tragic.
Had her sense of guilt been able to overcome her old
dislike to Philip, one source of conflict would have dis-
appeared ; but it was not so. After the first rush of pitiful
remorse, which had drowned for the time every other
sentiment, Viola was again assailed by the old antipathy.

With this she had continually to struggle, and those
who have realised the strange intensity of the child's
nature will understand what such a struggle implies.

Philip's bantering, familiarly affectionate manner was
perpetually stirring up the old angry feelings. A sudden
flash of her dark eyes would make him laugh and pretend
to cower away as if in fear.

‘‘ ril be good ; I'll be good ! Don't murder me outright,
there's a good child ! "

And then the light would die out of her eyes, and she
would turn away, perhaps going to the window or to the
open door, where she would stand looking out upon
the sea.

Mrs. Sedley had permitted, and even encouraged, these
visits to the bedside of the invalid, because she regarded

VOL. I.

1

130

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

them as acts of atonement. The horror of causing a
fellow-creature's death had come so near tg the child
that she could not fail to be deeply impressed by it.

Philip’s recovery was very rapid. As soon as he- was
able to be moved, his mother bore him off in triumph
to Upton Court. That broke up ‘‘the symposium,” and
finished one of the most exciting chapters in Viola’s short
life. Her visits to Philip were still continued, but at longer
intervals, and under conditions entirely changed. She used
to bring him flowers as votive offerings; wild flowers
that she had gathered in the woods ; and sometimes she
would shyly offer him some worm or beetle which she
imagined must be as valuable in his eyes as it was in hers.

She tried to discover what his soul most yearaed for,
whether tadpoles or “ purple emperors ” or piping bull-
finches, or it might be a retriever puppy ! Then she
would spend her days trying to gratify his ambition. On
one occasion a round fluffy squeaking object with a
damp pink nose was placed in Philip’s arms, with the
words: “You said the other day that you wouldn’t care
to live without a retriever puppy; I have brought you
one, and you can have four more if you like.”

Philip kept the puppy, and said that now he was recon-
ciled to life.

A SYMPOSIUM.

131

To Viola^s delight, Bouncer — grown by this time into
a charming, pulpy, blundering creature, with the sweetest
disposition — had the honour of being taken up to Oxford
when his master returned thither at the commencement
of the term.

After that things rolled back to their old course ; Viola
seldom saw the outside of the gates of the Manor, and she
had ample opportunity, in the stagnant solitude of her home,
to brood upon the secret that clouded her colourless life.
It helped to exaggerate many qualities in her that were
already too pronounced, while hastening unduly the matu-
rity of her character.

She made no further attempts to wander out of bounds,
and Miss Gripper now seldom caught her climbing trees,
or engaged in any other unlady-like occupation. She de-
livered herself over to the influence of her mother, and
about eighteen months after Philip’s accident she passed
through a phase of fervent religious feeling, during which
she rivalled in devotion and self-mortification many a
canonised saint. Her mother had some trouble in keeping
her from doing herself bodily harm, for in her new-born
zeal she preferred tasks that gave her pain, and never
thought it possible to be well employed unless the occupa-
tion was severely distasteful.

132

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

She used now rather to enjoy her father’s fits of anger, for
they gave her an opportunity of showing a saint-like meek-
ness under persecution. At this time her behaviour was a
grotesque caricature of her mother’s whole life, but Mrs.
Sedley did not recognise the portrait. She rejoiced in her
daughter’s piety, and half-believed, perhaps, that in the
service of Heaven one might fly in the face of mere natural
laws (against which Mr. Slater preached such severe sermons)
with impunity.

Days and weeks passed on ; the daily routine was never
altered ; the only change that marked the course of time at
.the Manor-House was the presence of a lady who came daily
from the village of Upton to carry on Viola’s education.

Miss Bowles was a worthy, conscientious, washed-out per-
son, who had long said good-bye to joy, poor woman ! and
lived her dim, struggling, dreary life with lady-like propriety.

She scarcely seemed a real human being ; she was the
incarnated emblem of sound religious principles. Arithmetic
for schools, French (with Parisian accent), German (Hano-
verian), English Grammar, Composition, and History — all
these things and many others Miss Bowles represented ; —
but try to compound out of them a personality, and miser-
able was your failure ! It lay so deeply buried, so thickly
incrusted — like some poor bird’s nest petrified in the Derby-

A SYMPOSIUM,

133

shire springs — that you searched for it in vain. Perhaps
a genial, sympathetic person might have warmed it into
life once more, but Mrs. Sedley was neither genial nor
sympathetic.

Viola applied herself conscientiously to the dry tasks
which this lady imposed upon her, associating all that
was sapless and without colour in these daily tables of
facts and figures, with the neat but certainly not gaudy
drab bonnet and pinched-looking jacket of her governess.

Viola was growing now into a slim girl, graceful and
swift in her movements, with a reserved, melancholy expres-
sion and a rich, sweet voice. Philip Dendraith had pro-
phesied that she would turn out a fascinating woman, but,
according to her father, she threatened to be a dead failure.

“ How are we going to marry a pale-faced frightened
creature like that ? ” he demanded. ‘‘ She’s only fit for
a cloister ; and I, for my part, think it’s a great pity we
haven’t got nunneries to send our plain girls to. What’s
the use of keeping them idling about at home, every one
laughing at them because they can’t get husbands ? ”

At such remarks Mrs. Sedley, meek as she was, would
wince.

In her simple creed, marriage, no matter under what con-
ditions, was intrinsically sacred, but she would not counsel

134

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

her daughter to marry for money ; that seemed to her
very sinful. Yet she knew well that Mr. Sedley would
never tolerate for Viola a poor marriage ; he had long
been resting his hopes of the restitution of the family
fortunes upon his daughter; and without reserve he had
told his wife what he expected and what she must exert
herself to bring about. The anxious woman watched
her child’s development with dread ; for every day that
passed was bringing her nearer to the crisis of her life.
And what was the mother’s part to be in that fateful
moment ? Her influence over the girl was supreme :
upon her action all would depend.

The responsibility seemed unendurable, the problems of
conscience pitiless in the terrible alternatives which they
offered to the tortured will.

Suffering, which Mrs. Sedley had borne herself without a
murmur, made her tromble when it. threatened her child.
Yet her teaching to that child was perfectly consistent with
the whole tenor of her life : ‘‘ Endure bravely, and in
silence ; that is the woman’s part, my daughter.”

She was ready, with hands that trembled and quailing
heart (but she was ready), to give that nerve-thrilled being
to the flames — for Duty’s sake — and quickly that insatiate
woman’s Idol was advancing to demand his victim.

A SYMPOSIUM.

135

Year by year the state of Mr. Sedley’s money-matters
grew more hopeless, and a possibility which had long been
thought of in secret, was at last acknowledged openly be-
tween husband and wife. Mrs. Sedley had never seen her
husband so deeply moved as when he confessed that they
might have to leave the Manor-House, the home where he
had lived as a boy, where his father had lived and died,
and his. ancestors for many a generation. The man who
was devoid of sympathy, coarse, brutal, and narrow-minded,
was yet moved almost to tears at the prospect of banish-
ment from the home of his race. Sentiment — like a
sudden flame in seemingly dead embers — sprang up on this
one subject, though it answered to no other charming.

“ If it be in any way possible to avoid it, we will not, we
must not leave the old place,’ ^ said Mrs. Sedley earnestly.

“There is only one way to avoid it,” he replied; “Viola
must make a rich marriage.”

“Yes; if she loves the man,” Mrs. Sedley ventured to
suggest.

“ Loves — fiddle-de-dee ! ” cried her husband angrily ;
“don’t talk schoolgirl twaddle to me, madam. What has a
well-brought-up young woman to do with love, I should like
to know ? I have no patience with this spoony nonsense. I
call it downright improper. Let a young woman take what’s

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

136

given her and be thankful. Confound it ! it^s not every
woman that can get a husband at all ! ”

With these words ringing in her ears, Mrs. Sedley would
look with something approaching terror at the sensitive
face of her daughter, who, as she grew more womanly in
appearance, seemed to become more than ever shrinking
and reserved.

Her father shrugged his shoulders angrily.

“Who’s going to marry a girl like that?” he would ask
contemptuously; “she looks half-asleep.”

With her customary want of tact in appreciating char-
acter, Mrs. Sedley used to confide some of her anxieties to
Lady Clevedon, who scoffed long and loudly, not at Mrs.
Sedley, but at Viola.

“ Dear me ; it’s very interesting to be so sensitive ! —
quite a fashionable complaint among girls nowadays. Too
sensitive to marry, too sensitive to be mothers ! Is there
anything that they are nof too sensitive to be ? ”

“You know that I cannot answer you if you speak in
this vein, Augusta; but Viola gives me great anxiety.”

“My dear, something ought to be done; the machinery
of the universe must be stopped ; it is too coarse and noisy
for these highly-strung beings ; they can’t stand it. Clearly
‘ gravitation ought to cease when they pass by.’ ”

CHAPTER IX.

ALTERNA TIVES.

In silence, day by day and month by month, the clouds
swept over the Manor-House, and silently the scroll of the
years unfolded, revealing little, but hinting many things.
Nine times the leaves had fallen since Philip’s accident,
and Geoffrey had now shot up into a gawky, good-natured
youth, and his parents began to cast about anxiously in their
minds to find him a profession. His hearty loathing of the
drudgery of office-work made the choice difficult. Geoffrey
would have preferred the army, but his father swore a great
many oaths, and declared that he was not going to be bled
to death by a lot of idle sons who couldn’t live upon their
pay. He had had enough of that, Manitoba was bruited
(for no congenial work nearer home could be heard of),
and this, as an alternative, in case nothing better offered,
Geoffrey had come to regard as his destiny. Meanwhile
he remained at home, and was understood to be “ looking
out for something.” The intervals between the times of

138

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

looking out ” he used to spend in fishing his father's trout-
stream, for this was the delight of his soul.

Geoffrey’s presence made a great change in Viola’s life,
and her father began to feel more hopeful about her future
achievements, after the boy had driven away the dreary de-
pressed look, and summoned in its place an expression that
entirely transfigured the girl’s face. Her rich dark skin and
black hair, the fine eyes kindling with youthful delights, gave
her genuine pretensions to beauty.

It was a sombre beauty ; still beauty it was, and of a sub-
tle and haunting kind. During the nine uneventful years
which had ushered in her girlhood, Viola had only now
and again met either Philip Dendraith or Harry Lancaster.
Caleb she occasionally saw. He was still living among his
beloved books in the little sea-haunted Hermitage.

Harry had gone to India with his regiment, and Cleve-
don mourned his exile, and looked forward to his shortly
expected return with much joy. Philip was reported to
be leading a dissipated life in London, where his good
looks, his brilliant prospects, and his undoubted social
talents carried all before him. Whenever he was at Upton
Court, he made an effort to renew his old acquaintance
with Viola, but this was no easy task. Shyness, partly
hereditary, partly induced by a solitary life, had become

ALTERNATIVES.

139

almost a disease with her, and she used to flee from her
fellow-creatures whenever they approached.

For the third time during a three weeks’ visit, Philip
arrived one afternoon at the Manor-House, and asked for
Viola, but she was not to be found. She had seen the
visitor arrive, and instantly set off at her utmost speed
to the farthest confines of the park, where, shivering with
excitement, she lingered for hours and hours, not venturing
to go back to the house, in case Philip should still be
there. Unfortunately for her, her father happened to be in,
and he was so angry when, at last, she did cautiously return,
that she thought he would have struck her. She had never
seen him so enraged, although outbursts of this sort, after
his drinking-bouts, were not uncommon. Fury carried the
man out of himself, and he said things which even he after-
wards owned were ‘‘rather strong.” Viola listened in
silence. She was learning lessons never to be forgotten to
her dying day, lessons which perhaps every woman has to
learn in some form or another, but which few are fated to
be taught in so many words by their own fathers.

In the name of Heaven and common-sense, how did she
expect to get a husband if she behaved in this crazy, addle-
headed manner? Half the women in London were ready
to throw themselves into Philip Dendraith’s arms, and yet

140

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

Viola would not condescend to the common politeness of
coming to see him when he called ! She had run away on
purpose, of course ; it was an old trick of hers, very girl-
like and engaging no doubt, but might one make a polite
request that these graceful exhibitions of coyness might
not occur again ? Coyness was all very well when a man
had expressed himself distinctly, but really, before he had
made any advances at all, it was what one might call
premature.

You are not a queen of beauty, let me tell you, that
you can afford to indulge in these womanish devices.^ My
doors are not besieged with suitors for your hand.’’

Not want to marry ? Not want to marry ? ” Mr. Sedley
yelled, with a burst of fury. “You — you — miserable little
fool 1 Do you know what you are saying ? Can’t you
speak ? Can’t you say something instead of standing there
before me like a block of wood ? Not want to marry
indeed ! And pray, what do you think would be the use of
you if you didn’t marry? What can you do but loaf dis-
mally about the place and serve as a wet blanket to every
one’s enjoyment? What’s the. good of a woman but to
marry and look after her husband and children? What
can she do else? Tell me that, if you please. Do you
hear me, Viola ? ”

ALTERNATIVES,

141

“ I would try and earn my own living/’ said Viola at last
in a low, trembling voice.

'‘'‘Earn your own living echoed her father, with a
shout of laughter. ‘‘ Well, that is good, upon my word !
You earn your own living ! And pray, in what profession
would you propose to become a shining light ? The army,
the navy, the Church, or the law ? Or would you perhaps
enter upon the field of politics? Everything is open to
you ; you have only to choose. And you know so much,
don’t you? You are so learned and capable, so well
able to force your way in the world. Oh ! pray don’t
think of marrying ; a far more brilliant and congenial career
lies before you.”

Viola answered nothing ; she was suffering too keenly,
realising miserably that in her father’s mockery lay a deadly
truth ; that she had; in fact, nothing to reply but, Thou
hast said it.”

What was she ? What did she know ? What had she seen ?
What could she do ? To all this there was only one answer :
Nothing. Books had been forbidden her; human society
had been cut off from her; scarcely had she been beyond
the gates of her home, except once or twice when she had
gone for change of air to Wales or Yorkshire, or for a day
now and then to London to see the sights ” !

142

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

“ O mother, it was cruel ! From the depths of her heart
that bitter cry went up, the first word or thought of reproach
that had ever arisen there for that much-adored and all-
devoted mother. And this was the result of those anxious
days, those fervent prayers, that ceaseless self-denial ! By
her own father, this carefully, anxiously tended child was
taunted with her helplessness, and reminded not only that
the sole career open to her was marriage, but that she must
make deliberate efforts to secure it for herself, or to aid
and abet in schemes which others undertook on her behalf.
She must bestir herself in the matter, for it was her ap-
pointed business.

In after-life Viola learnt about the outcast of her sex
facts which at this time were unknown to her; but that
revelation was not more painful, nor did it even strike her
as very different from what she had learnt to-day about the
lot of women who were not outcast, but who took upon
themselves to cast out others.

The girl’s stunned silence irritated her father beyond
endurance.

In the name of Heaven, why can’t you speak ? ” he
thundered ; it’s your confounded obstinacy ; and you get
it from your mother. But we have to see yet who is master.
Understand that I mean to endure no more of this non-

ALTERNATIVES.

143

sense, and the next time you are asked to appear in the
drawing-room, you will please to do so, and to make your-
self pleasant to the visitor into the bargain. Too much of
this accursed nonsense would land you high and dry, a
burden to me for life.”

Viola drew a quick breath.

“ Yes, a burden, a dead weight, hanging like a millstone
round my neck. Do you know what a woman is who
does not marry ? I will tell you : she is a cumberer of
the ground, a devourer of others’ substance, a failure, a
wheel that won’t turn ; she has no meaning ; she is in the
way ; she ought never to have been born. She is
neglected, despised, left out; and who cares whether she
lives or dies? She is alone, scorned and derided, with-
out office, without object,' without the right to exist, —
all doors are closed to her and all firesides forbidden. If
you are minded to choose such a lot, at least you shall
do it with your eyes open. I tell you a woman is worse
than nothing on the face of the earth who is not perform-
ing her natural duties, serving her husband and her chil-
dren. That’s what she’s made for, and if she doesn’t do
it she’s an absurdity, — a — an anomaly, a ramrod without
a gun, a key. without a lock, a — a — ship without a sail
— she’s — she’s a damned nuisance !” roared Mr. Sedley,

144

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

with a final burst of fury, as he turned on his heel and
stamped out of the room, banging the door so ferociously
that it shook the old house from cellar to roof.

‘‘ The master’s been drinking again,” announced the
butler to the inmates of the servants’ hall.

It was in the drawing-room that this stormy interview
took place ; the chill, ghostly old room where the lost souls
dwelt and the Spirit of Music held her court. It was a
dreary day ; Philip had chosen it for his call, thinking that
Viola was likely to be home. Outside, old William was
weeding the gravel in his usual steady, patient way; the
ceaseless chip-chop of his hoe, regular as the dropping of
water, sounded forlorn in the silence.

Viola stood for full five minutes exactly where her father
left her, with her eyes fixed upon the dull forms of the
mist-dimmed trees, upon the melancholy avenue whose few
remaining leaves awaited the first breath of wind, to fall
shivering to the sodden ground. Then with a low sob she
flung herself into the nearest chair and buried her face in
the cushions. She was shaken from head to foot, but not
a sound escaped her. Grief which finds its easiest expres-
sion in tears was reserved for souls less passionate.

There was something frantic in her present distress ; she
was like a hunted creature at bay. Her position, as repre-

ALTERNATIVES,

145

sented by her father’s words, seemed utterly unbearable,
utterly humiliating.

Why had her parents forced existence upon her if it was
to be one long degradation ? Better indeed that she had
never been born ! “ Better, ah ! better a thousand times,”

old William’s patient hoe seemed to say, as it beat its
rhythm on the gravel without ; “ better, a thousand times,
a thousand times ! ”

With a strange desperate pleasure in self-torture, the girl
placed the whole picture clearly before her mind ; showing
herself exactly how she stood, how helpless she was, how
closely the two alternatives of the woman’s lot encompassed
her. The next time that Philip called, it would beseem het
to put on her best frock and her best smile, and try all she
knew to charm him. Were not her future prospects depen-
dent on his (or on some man’s) favour ? Had she not been
informed (and in most explicit terms) that her father had
no mind to keep her always in his house, and that he
expected her to betake herself without delay to her “ natural
duties ? ”

The chip-chopping of the hoe had ceased now, but only
to be succeeded by the swish-swish of the broom sweeping
away the withered leaves.

‘‘ I could sweep away withered leaves, or hoe out weeds 3

VOL. I.

K

146

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

I could dust or cook, or wash, or — or anything that requires
only health . and strength. I might even be like Miss
Bowles and teach, but it would have to be very young chil-
dren,— I know so little, so little !

She gave a shiver.

Until to-day, — O mother, dear mother, I did not even
know what it meant to be a girl ! ”

As a pulse, the broom went beating on the gravel outside,
and upon the window-panes struck the first drops of coming
rain. A sound of wind among the trees heralded its ap-
proach, and presently it arrived ; a gush of tears from the
sorrow-laden heavens. Old William worked on as if he did
not notice it, patiently bending his head to windward,
without so much as looking up to see where the rain came
from. Viola could bear the sight no longer. She rose,
drew up the heavy ill-fitting window, and stood with the
rain drifting in upon her face and hair.

“William,’’ she said, “why do you go on working? You
will get cold ; you will get rheumatism ; it is so bad for
you. Why don’t you go in ? ”

Old William paused for a moment, and raised himself
slightly (only slightly) from his bent attitude, leaning on the
handle of his broom.

“ The rain don’t do me no harm,. Miss,” he said, with a

ALTERNATIVES,

147

slight smile ; Tm used to it. Thomas says I’m to get this
gravel done to-night, and Mr. Sedley he wants to see it
done ; and I’m just a-doin’ of it.”

“Oh, what does it matter?” cried Viola. “Rheumatism
must be so hard to bear.”

William gave a sadly knowing shake of the head.

“Ay, that it be. Miss,” he said. “I has it so bad at
times as I can’t scarcely move — the rheumatis’ is very
bad, very bad indeed. My father, ’e ’ad it dreadful, ’e
did ; his joints was all gone stiff, and his fingers was all
crumpled up like.”

“ Then it is madness for you to stay out in the rain,”
urged Viola.

But the old man had not arrived at that highly advanced
stage of mental development when things immediate can
be balanced against things future. As he had done for
years, he went on working in the rain, and endured his
rheumatism when it arrived with his usual patience. The
act of mind and will necessary to alter his habitual conduct
in deference to experience, was beyond him.

All he would do, was to put on his coat, at Viola’s urgent
entreaty.

There was something in the dim, forlorn lot of this old
man that had always filled Viola with sadness, but to-day

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

she could have taken his hard old hand and kissed it and
wept over it in an ecstasy of pity and fellow-feeling.

Had she spoken aloud the words that came welling up
into her heart, she would have made old William open
his eyes as he had never opened them in his life before.

“ Let me come to you and comfort you ; let me be a
daughter to you ; let me work for you and for myself ; and
then perhaps your lot might be brighter, and then I should
not need to seek the favour of any man for the sake of
house and home, or to avoid remaining here to be a burden
to my father and the world !

Seldom do civilised men and women speak according
to their impulses. They are too well drilled, too discreet ;
their lives are guided by anything and everything except
their own deepest longings and their own soundest reason.
Reason may be consulted, but it does not turn the scale.
The caprice of others is the most frequent civilised motive,
while often mere force of habit will hold people in an old
and painful groove for long pathetic years, because they
consistently subordinate the great to the little, matters of
life and death to some present, importunate, but perfectly
trivial claim. Broken hearts, oftener than we think, are
the handiwork of feeble heads. As Harry Lancaster had
once said, with his usual extravagance, ‘‘Give me the

ALTERNA TIVES.

149

making of the people’s intellect, and let who will make
their morals ! ”

When the rain and wind became so violent that old
William could not continue his work, he yielded to the
logic of events and took shelter in the potting-shed.

The rain was driving in great hissing sheets across the
country; the windows streamed, and shook with angry
clamour.

Throwing on a cloak and ^drawing the hood over her
head, Viola went out into the storm. She could scarcely
make way against it, the wind and rain beat so furiously
against her. But she pressed on, seeming to find relief
from the tempest of her own feeling in the tumult of the
elements. One of the most painful features in her trouble
was, that there was no one to be angry with ; her whole
nature rose in fury against what she felt to be the alterna-
tive indignities forced upon her, and yet her anger could
not pour itself upon any individual; she could not fling
back the insult in his face and be free of it.

It clung to her defilingly, as some slimy sea-weed clings
when it loses the sustaining of the water. The conscious-
ness of it was fast saturating her whole being, so that the
very texture of her soul was changed.

Struggling blindly on, harbouring a thousand wild

THE WING OF AZ^AEL.

150

thoughts, her atteirtion was arrested by a low whine,
and turning, she saw coming towards her the faithful Bill
Dawkins, — a decrepid old dog now, so sadly different from
the sprightly poodle of bygone days, ‘‘who looked as if
the speed of thought were in his limbs ! ’’ Quietly and
with how sedate a mien Bill Dawkins dragged his slow
limbs across the lawn, his ears adroop, his tail no longer
quivering (as a compass-needle) with electrical intelligence !

He and old William might have mingled their tears
over their rheumatism, for poor Bill also suffered from
this cruel malady ; and had he been capable of mounting
the hill of human thought and overlooking thence the
plain of universal destiny, he might, in his pain and dis-
couragement, have made an adaptation of the Japanese
proverb and cried gloomily, “If you hate a dog, let him
live/’

Viola went to meet the limping creature with sorrowful
heart.

Such was the end of life, and the beginning ? the

rosy, riotous beginning? Of that was Viola herself a
shining example !

“Are you coming with me in all this rain?” she asked,
as she stooped to stroke the dog, who sat down at her feet
and raised his expressive brown eyes to her face.

ALTERNATIVES.

151

He looked up at her pleadingly, wistfully, as if he were
trying with all his might to speak.

What is it ? What is it ? she asked pitifully. Are
you in pain ? Are you miserable and lonely ? Are you a
burden to the world, — a wheel that won’t turn ? Does no
one care whether you are alive or dead ? But, indeed, one
person does care, and one heart sickens at these dumb
tragedies that nobody heeds.”

She bent down and took him tenderly in her arms —
great creature as he was — and carried him into one of the
many tumble-down old outhouses . where the apples and
pears, and the watering-ma.chines and rollers, and a thou-
sand and one odds and ends were stowed away.

The place had a fresh earthy scent, redolent to Viola of
subtle memories of childhood, bringing back in sweet'over-
powering rushes feelings of the bygone days. How many
a joyous hour had she and Geoffrey and Bill Dawkins
spent in this old- shed, potting cuttings, trying experiments
(and such experiments !) with the watering-machine — grow-
ing instantaneous mustard and cress, eating apples, and
indulging in a thousand other pastimes, in all of which the
poodle had more or less taken part ! There was some
straw and a piece of old sacking on the floor, and upon
this Viola laid him, covering him up as much as he would

152

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

allow her, for he was shivering all over and looked most
wretched. He seemed very weak, but he wagged his tail
now and again, and he had a heart-breaking way of offering
to shake hands at intervals in a feeble, affectionate fashion.
There was something in his demeanour besides gratitude ;
he seemed to have divined that his mistress was in trouble,
and was doing his best to comfort her.

Love is one of those lawless emotions that cares nothing
for what is ‘‘ natural ” or expected ; and Viola’s love for
this faithful creature did not pause to moderate itself on
the reflection that to expend so much time and devotion
upon an animal argued an ill-regulated mind.

The good poodle had a personality as distinct as that
of any human being, and a more lovable one, human
being never had !

Viola was down on her knees beside him, caressing,
soothing, speaking loving words, with a desperate feeling
in her heart, all the time, that the poor creature was
dying.

“ It would not be kind to keep you if I could,” she
said ; but oh ! how sad, how sad I shall be without
you ! ”

Almost as if he understood, the dog half-turned and
laid his paw, in the old pleading, caressing way, upon

ALTERNA TIVES.

153

her arm. The next moment he sank down again panting ;
his body gave a spasmodic twitch, and then lay very still.
With a low cry, Viola flung her arms round him passion-
ately, and kissed his shaggy head again and again.

‘‘Good-bye, good-bye, my noblest, kindest, faithfullest
friend ! Good-bye for ever ! and oh that I could tell how
I have loved you ! ”

The dim, beautiful eyes opened slowly ; the dying
creature looked up with an almost human expression of
love and gratitude ; then he feebly licked Viola’s hand for
the last time, and died.

Viola, lying down beside him on the rough straw, sobbed
her heart out.

CHAPTER X.

ADRIENNE.

Not many days after Bill Dawkins^ death Harry Lancaster
arrived in England. His home-coming was a great joy to
his mother and sister, who lived at Upton, in a tiny house
belonging to Lord Clevedon, about a mile from the home
where they had passed their prosperous days before Mr.
Lancaster’s death. Mrs. Dixie — who had married a second
time, and lost her second husband almost immediately after-
wards,— had a bland expansiveness about her manner which
referred directly to her former glories, just as her old lace
and miniatures, and sundry valuable pieces of plate, made
eloquent allusion to that past which threw so much efful-
gence upon her and her only daughter, Adrienne. Adrienne,
however, was a cultivated, keen-witted young woman,.dainty

in ideas as in her person, and she made her allusions to

«

the past with delicacy, and indeed very seldom made them
at all. She did not follow her mother’s example of wearing
unremittingly at her throat, a gigantic ancestor, with pink

ADRIENNE,

155

cheeks and a light blue coat. Harry used to say of
j\Irs. Dixie that she was like a gorgeous sunset after a
hot midsummer day; the sun and its glories had gone
down, but the glow still remained.

Well, mother, still the lady of the Castle ! ’’ he said,
not many days after his return* “ I declare you wear
your vanished crown more royally than eve*r you did its
antitype. It makes me feel like an involuntary Prince
of Wales merely to look at you !

As Mrs. Dixie liked to think that she possessed the
grand air,’' and as her sense of the ridiculous had its
own very exclusive walks in life, she was able to draw
up her portly figure with a peculiar wave of the spine
presumably characteristic of royalty, while she smiled
graciously, down her not perfectly straight nose, remarking,
with a sway of the head like that of a poplar in the wind—

“ My dear boy, I trust that I am as well able to fill
a humble position with dignity as one more elevated.
It is not wealth and prosperity that make the lady” (this
with an air that beggars description).

Harry gave a queer smile, expressive of so many things
that it would be hard to name them all, without making
an exhaustive analysis of his character, and that would
be a hard task indeed. A few characteristics may, how-

156

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

ever, be given. He was contemplative, critical, with an
abiding enjoyment of the comedy of life, and a continual
consciousness of the great deeps that lay beneath the feet
of the players.

It was this eternal mystery of life that gave such a wild
zest to the never-ending game, such a ring to the laughter
echoing dimly through those dark gulfs, — such wings to
the jest and the fancy !

Harry was regarded at the Cottage as a joke personified ;
his mother used to treasure up his sayings, and repeat
them afterwards, minus the point, to her friends, with great
pride and pomp.

It was almost impossible to annoy Harry Lancaster,
although he was capable on rare occasions of furious
anger. The little mortifications that irritate most people,
served only as a fresh subject for some ridiculous
pseudo-philosophy, on his part ; so that in truth he was
a very pleasant inmate of any house, for he had an
alchemist’s gift of turning base little troubles into golden
opportunities for laughter. His sister Adrienne, who bore
the whole burden of the household and family affairs upon
her wise shoulders, used to declare that Harry’s presence
acted upon her health as a change to the seaside, and that
he was the only infallible cure she knew of for headaches.

ADRIENNE,

157

For the rest, he was more or less of a mystery ; no one
seemed to know what he thought in his serious moments,
or if he had any serious moments at all.

His manner was genial, even gaily affectionate ; but the
light, nonsensical vein always ran through everything that
he said, cropping out unexpectedly in his gravest moments,
and constituting a wall of reserve far more impenetrable
than mere silence. His air of perfect frankness was
most misleading. Brother and sister had been confidants
as boy and girl in the early days at “ the Palace before
the “ Sunset,” as Harry called respectively their old home
and their change of fortune. Together, in the dusk, they
used to talk of the mysteries of life and death, of immor-
tality, of free-will, of good and evil, of the formation of
character, and the service of God. Adrienne used often
to wonder what her brother thought of these things now,
after his man's experience of life. She herself had adopted
a more or less conventional view of things in an uncon-
ventional way.

She was too clever to be a mere passive echo : thinking
for herself within adamantine boundaries, she had now
become a refined, elevated, intelligent expositor of current
views.

She leant towards ideas of great moral elevation, while

158

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

in the regions of the intellect her admiration and capa-
bilities ran towards a certain French finesse and sparkle,
these qualities being shadowed forth in the daintiness of
her dress and the delicate nuances of her manner.

Without being pretty, Adrienne was attractive in appear-
ance; she was one of those people whose person cannot
be separated in thought from their personality and judged
apart Every movement, every gesture had a certain finish,
just as every detail of Adrienne’s dress had a definite effect
calculated with reference -to the whole. The swift pliancy
of fancy which was one of Harry’s most attractive pecu-
liarities Adrienne shared with him, but there was a singular
difference in the manifestation of the same quality in the
two characters.

In Harry it suggested a certain largeness and freedom of
nature ; while in the sister, it expressed fineness, brilliancy,
cultivation ; but so far from giving the idea of liberty,
it implied that of strict limitation. It suggested a
nature close-set, concise, with crisp outlines, guiltless of
expansive wandering into the untried. Adrienne Lan-
caster never wandered carelessly into any region. She
must be quite sure if she approved of a region before
she entered it. There was no reckless touch in her dis-
position, and under no conditions could one imagine the

ADRIENNE.

159

quality developing in her. Harry, on the other hand, had
it to a dangerous extent; though, so far, it had shown
itself in a mere ciot of fancy and humour. So alien to
Adrienne’s consciousness was the attribute, that she even
failed to .notice it in her brother, closely as she studied
him.

It may be supposed that a good-looking young officer,
of genial temperament and pleasant manners, became very
dear to the village of Upton; and “society” claimed him
passionately for its own. The vicar’s family was inordi-
nately large, and the prevailing 'impression left upon the
mind after an introduction was of the “eternally feminine,”
a circumstance which the village thought^most unfortunate,
for how were all those girls to get married ?

How indeed? for though Harry might do his duty as
England expected of him, he .could not marry the whole
contingent of amiable sisters. England would have shown
herself ungrateful if he had !

And then, was he in a position to marry even one of
them ? The village feared not, much as it desired to see a
break made in the firm ranks of the vicar’s charming family.
Dick Evans, the eldest son, a pleasant, clever young fellow,
now became Harry’s frequent companion, though he was
scarcely a greater friend to him than Dorotliy, the youngest

i6o . THE WING OF AZRAEH

sister, still little more than a child, a fresh, robust, joyous
creature, with bright cheeks and untidy auburn hair, and
an incurable love for climbing trees and other unladylike
pastimes, in which Harry wickedly encouraged her. She
was an amusing proof of the inadequateness of common-
sense for achieving reasonable views of life ; for Dorothy
had, as Harry said, enough of this quality to supply the
deficiency of the House of Commons (and he could not
say more), yet her ideas on men, women, and things were
the most laughter-moving that it had ever been his fortune
to encounter.

She was one of those rare beings who are predestined to
be happy, to whom ‘^whatever is, is right, in the social
world as in nature.

Upton was twelve miles from the Manor, so that Viola,
unfortunately, could not enjoy the enormous advantage of
knowing intimately a girl so different from herself as Dorothy
Evans. Once Viola had been to Upton, and remembered it
as a little cluster of thatched cottages with pretty gardens,
and one or two old-fashioned houses, which looked so calm
and beautiful that it seemed as if the current of life must
have been arrested, as if some satisfied Faust had at last
said to the passing moment, “Stay; thou art so fair, and
the command had been obeyed by Destiny.

ADRIENNE.

i6r

It was on a balmy summer's day, that Viola first saw the
place, and the picture remained very vividly in her memory.
She wondered afterwards if some premonition of what was
to come had made her regard it with special interest.

Do not all sensitive men and women feel driven at times
to believe that certain places, just as certain people, are
fateful for them? — that there is some subtle link which
cannot be broken if they would ?

Beautiful as it was, Viola had a faint, unaccountable dis-
like to the village ; it seemed like a lovely grave, it was so
“hideously serene."

“ No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off, happier sea,”

though the sea lay so near, out of sight beyond the undu-
lating downs.

The second time that she saw this place was on the
rare occasion of a two days' visit to her aunt at Clevedon.
By this time the “ demon boy," as Harry called the hope-
ful heir, had grown up and gone to Oxford, while the
girl, who was some years older than Viola, had married,
and lived in town, — “prosperous and miserable," accord-
ing to the same authority.

For a wonder, “ Aunt Augusta " had just now only one
friend staying with her, a supernaturally stylish lady called

VOL. I.

L

i62

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

Mrs. Russell Courtenay, who had so much manner ” that
Viola was alarmed and overwhelmed — little guessing that
this small-waisted being, with her vast assortment of turns
and twists and wriggles, her bewildering pranks and ges-
tures, was in reality a prey to shyness, greater if possible
than Viola’s own.

Lady Clevedon drove her two guests over to call on
Mrs. Dixie and Adrienne.

“I hope that Harry will be in, but I don’t think* it’s
likely,” she said ; “ he is the most erratic person I know ;
and I fear he is either walking poor old Mr. Pellett off his
legs, undoing Dorothy Evans’ careful education, or talking
nonsense to that ridiculous creature who poses as a philo-
sopher, Caleb — Caleb what’s-his-name ? ”

‘‘Williams,” suggested Mrs. Russell Courtenay, who knew
something about literature, but whose memory her unfor-
tunate shyness sometimes confused.

Lady Clevedon treated her suggestion with friendly deri-
sion, and Mrs. Courtenay suffered as keenly as if she had
had on a shabby dress, or there had been a want of style
about her bonnet. Effect was the idol of her soul. She
posed, even to herself.

The neat little cottage, covered with wisteria in full bloom,
looked radiant this afternoon.

ADRIENNE.

163

Adrienne, in a dainty but serviceable holland apron, was
gardening when the visitors drove up.

Poor Viola ! this young woman, too, had “ manner,’^
though it was less artificial than Mrs. Courtenay’s, and
therefore less alarming.

“ O Augusta ! I am so glad ! And Mrs. Courtenay
too ! ” she cried, running to the gate to let them in. “ This
is heaping coals of fire upon my head ; for I ought to have
called on you long ago. You must forgive a busy person
who has cares of state upon her shoulders. Do come in ;
my mother will be delighted.”

“Adrienne,” said Lady Clevedon, “this is my niece,
Viola, whose acquaintance you ought to have made long
ago. However, better late than never ! ”

“ Better, indeed,” said Miss Lancaster, with a pleasant
smile. “ I scarcely feel like a stranger to you, Miss Sedley,
for your name has so long been familiar to me. Alas !
those horrid twelve miles between Upton and your place
have much to answer for, have they not ? ”

“ A punishment for flying in the face of Providence and
living in the country,” observed Mrs. Courtenay, with a
stylish undulation.

This proposition led to a gay dispute, during which
Adrienne conducted the visitors indoors, where they found

164

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

Mrs. Dixie indulging (if the truth may be told) in a regal
nap, from which, however, she woke with creditable rapidity,
and received her guests in what Harry called her best
‘‘sunset’’ manner.

He came in, in the midst of the interview, looking very
warm and travel-stained. Adrienne said that a clever
geologist might tell exactly where he had been walking
by a study of his garments.

“ I have been exploring the cliffs with Dick Evans,” said
Harry.

“ Would he not come back with you to tea as usual ? ”
asked Mrs. Dixie.

Harry smiled.

“ No ; he preferred returning to the Rectory by the back
entrance, ‘ for reasons ’ (as Mrs. Carlyle says) ‘ which it may
be interesting not to state.’”

Being pressed for explanations, Harry said that Dick had
unhappily rolled down a soft chalky incline, and that the
general tone of his colouring had been so materially altered
thereby, as to make him feel a delicacy about appearing in
refined society.

Dorothy had met him in the back avenue, and had
been driven, for the expression of her feelings, to roll
over and over on the lawn, regardless of the fact that

ADRIENNE.

165

her mother had never encouraged her in such emotional
excesses.

After a burst of laughter, which the mere name of Dorothy
was usually enough to call forth at the Cottage, Lady
Clevedon laid her hand on Viola’s arm.

‘‘Now, Harry,” she said, “tell me if you know who
this is?”

Harry roused himself, uncrossed his arms, and looked
inquiringly from his cousin to Viola. She blushed and
smiled a little, and as she smiled, a faint memory of a
memory, like a whiff of scent, came to him, and faded away
again. He struggled to recall it in vain, and then a thought
seemed to strike him.

“ Not Miss Sedley ? ”

He rose with a pleased smile and went over to her.

“ I am very glad I came in this afternoon,” he said, “ for

%

I am most interested to renew our old* acquaintance. I
have often laughed over that day at the ruin when you were
so angry with Philip Dendraith ; do you remember ? It
was splendid the way you fought him. Do you know, I
can still see a resemblance to what you were at that time ;
though you don’t look quite so like fighting as you did
then,” he added, with a smile.

“ Oh, I hope I am not so bad-tempered now,” she said.

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

1 66

blushing. ‘‘I was always very angry if any one behaved
unkindly to my dog, and you know Mr. Dendraith was
unkind to him.’’

There was a faint, very faint gleam in her eyes even now
as she thought of it.

“The old spirit has not died out,” Harry said to himself,
with a smile; “she thinks it is dead and gone, but some
day, when least expected, it will break out again, and in the
woman it will mean a good deal more than in the child.”

“ I suppose you sometimes see your old enemy, now that
he is at Upton Court?” Harry continued. “ Being a rider, he
could get over to you without much trouble, across country.”

Harry wondered why Viola blushed again so deeply and
so painfully. He was not foolish enough to jump to the
usual conclusion in such cases, but he did nevertheless
think it possible that the girl had followed in the footsteps
of so many of her sex, and lost her heart to Philip
Dendraith. In making up their old quarrel, it would be
so easy to overdo it. A mere hair’s-breadth would take
them across the line of mere reconciliation, and Philip was
“ fearfully and wonderfully ” handsome.

Harry felt regretful, almost indignant, at the notion of
this possibility. From a worldly point of view Philip
would, of course, be a brilliant match ; but he was cold.

ADRIENNE.

167

self-indulgent, cynical, with the same unbending will that
he had shown when a mere youth, further strengthened by
the easy conquests which it had since brought him. Be-
sides, Harry knew that Philip had lived a life of low and
selfish pleasure, only a little more prudently than others, so
that, while many of his companions had gone to wreck and
ruin altogether, he was still prospering.

But this cold prudence which had saved him, was
no ornament to his character in his critic’s eyes. Viola
married to such a man was almost unthinkable, and yet
(Harry said to himself) Society is every day bringing
about these inconceivable things. The woman marries
and gives no sign ; no one knows how the unthinkable
is worked out in daily detail.

He studied the face beside him with interest. It
attracted him far more than many a girlish face which
he would have called pretty, and have forgotten again the
next minute. Was Viola pretty ? He did not quite know.
The appeal that her face made was new in kind, and had
to be considered. She had a very dark skin, and her
colouring when she blushed was rich and fine. The face
gained upon one rapidly ; it was a haunting face — yes,
certainly it was pretty ; — very pretty. What had come to
him? It was beautiful I

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

1 68

Harry drew his hand across his eyes, as if he thought
they had deceived him, but no ; in a little over twenty
minutes, during which the conversation had been upon quite
trivial topics, these changes of impression had taken place
in him, and the face which he had hesitated at first to call
pretty had acquired in his eyes an unaccountable charm.

‘‘ I suppose not very much has happened at your home
since I left,’^ he said, musingly. ‘Ht is just the same here.
I go away, for years ] a thousand things happen to me ; I
see hundreds of new faces, new scenes : I have many ex-
periences great and small, — and I come back to find pre-
cisely the same life going on as when I went away. I ask
what has happened ; and I am told that old Sally is dead,
and so-and-so is married ; that a new window has been
put in the church, and that Lady Clevedon has built a
wing to the schoolhouse ! But I suppose these are very
important matters after all,” Harry added, remembering
that such interests were all that Viola possessed.

I know very little of what goes on outside my own
home,” she said. “ I go to visit the people in our village
with my mother sornetimes, but I don’t like it; I never
know what to say, and I feel intrusive and uncomfortable.
The people always talk to mother about their Heavenly
Father” — Viola hesitated a little, for a sudden suppressed

ADRIENNE.

169

smile had flitted across Harry’s face, a smile not to be
hidden by the moustache which Adrienne used to say
endeared him to his fellow-creatures so inexpressibly.

He looked very grave the next minute, and expressed
great interest in Viola’s account of her district-visiting.

‘‘ My mother gives the cottagers soup and blankets, and
she reads the Bible to them,” Viola continued, drawn out
of her reserve by something simple and genial in Harry’s
manner which no one had yet been able to resist. His
dramatic faculty of entering into all varieties of human
feeling gave him a power over his fellows, different from,
but perhaps not less reniarkable than Philip Dendraith’s.
It was irksome to him to have to retire into the limits
of his own personality ; he preferred to explore that of
others. The simple, firm outlines of Viola’s character, and
its intense concentration, formed an attractive study to a
mind so entirely opposite in type.

‘‘And do you think the villagers like to have the Bible
read to them ? ” he inquired gravely.

“ Of course,” said Lady Clevedon, overhearing the ques-
tion ; “ there has been established an intimate relation,
of the nature of cause and effect, between the Bible and
port wine, which is very favourable to' the propagation of
the Gospel among the labouring classes in this country.”

170

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

“Augusta, you are really very naughty cried Mrs.
Russell Courtenay, with one of her favourite wriggles.

“ This fresh innocent mind will lose its bloom if the
young ears are assailed with such ideas.^’

“ Oh ! she had much better listen to me than to Harry,”
said Lady Clevedon ; “ I think he really must be ‘ The
Ambassador Extraordinary ’ (you know the book ?) ” —
(Mrs. Courtenay murmured, “Oh yes.”) — “He has all
the plausible exterior of that emissary, and I can vouch
for the Satanic character of his sentiments. I thought
India would have cooled him down ” — (“ Not a usual result
of the climate,” threw in Adrienne) — “ but instead of that

he is worse than ever ! ”

%

“ You seem to have been able to draw him out,” said
Mrs. Dixie, a little annoyed;* “he never tells us what he
thinks. I suppose he doesn’t consider us capable of under-
standing him.”

“ Oh ! nonsense,” cried Lady Clevedon ; “ he wisely
shrinks from your criticism.”

“This is crushing,” said Harry, lazily. “I wonder why^
it is that a peaceable fellow like me should always be
attacked. ‘ Can you fight ? ’ ‘ No.^ ‘Then come on.’ That
is how the world treats me ! And yet I smile forgivingly
upon it.

ADRIENNE,

171

‘ She was more than usual calm ;

She did not give a single damn,’ ”

he murmured, softly quoting.

‘‘ Mr. Lancaster, Mr. Lancaster ! ” cried Mrs. Courtenay,
^^respectez t innocence P

“ I beg your pardon ? ” said Harry, bending towards her
in courteous inquiry.

“ Respectez VinnocenceP repeated the lady, with increased
emphasis.

“ Might I ask you to repeat the phrase once more?'’

Mrs. Courtenay lost her presence of mind.

I said you should respect innocence, Mr. Lancaster.”

“ Oh ! I always do,” said Harry, with an air a little
shocked that the lady should have thought it necessary
to recommend so obvious a duty. ‘‘Lives there a soul
so black ”

“ Now, Harry, no more of your nonsense,” said his cousin ;
“ Mrs. Courtenay isn’t used to you yet, and she must not
be badgered. When are you coming over to see us? And
you, Adrienne? Now don’t say you are busy; people
needn’t be busy unless they like. Business is the mark
of a feeble mind. Come over soon, while Viola is with
me ; you must get to know each other. I am going to
make her stay longer. — No, my dear, you needn’t talk
about your mamma, — your mamma will have to do as she

172

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

is told. I explain to her that it’s exceedingly bad for a
girl to be shut up and never see a living creature. Harry,
I give you carle blanche to badger her as much as you like ;
it is just what she wants. Viola, then, will stay with me
for the next week — (be quiet, my dear !) — and you will all
come over and have some tennis, or anything you like — let
me see — (the Featherstones are coming to-morrow) — say on
Wednesday, then. So that’s settled.* No, Adrienne, excuse
me, you have nothing whatever to do. Australian letters ?
Nonsense. Haven’t got a dress ? Borrow one of your
mother’s.”

Or,” suggested Harry, “ adopt the idea of the poor
woman whom a narrow-minded world condemned *to a
madhouse because she insisted on wearing costumes made
out of advertisement sheets of the Times on week-days,
and brown-paper on Sundays.”

. “ If they were well made, I am sure they would look
very effective,” said Mrs. Courtenay.

‘‘ But, alas ! they would have a fault quite fatal in this
age of the Worship of the Golden Calf,” said Adrienne in
a tone which only to Harry betrayed its latent bitterness.
“ No one could stand before them and exclaim — like Mrs.
Carlyle’s maid before the pictures at the National Gallery —
“ How expensive ! ”

CHAPTER XL

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY,

When brother and sister arrived at Clevedon on the
Wednesday as arranged, Harry felt a pang of disappointment
at seeing his cousin only, and Mrs. Russell Courtenay, on
the tennis-ground.

‘‘ Your niece is gone, after all ? he asked.

“ Oh no, she is coming presently ; she is so absurdly
shy that I could not persuade her to be here when people
arrived. Most ridiculous ! She is going to slip in presently,
when you are all engaged in tennis, and thus escape
observation.

Harry opened his eyes.

“ How very painful it must be to be so shy ! ’’ said
Adrienne, who was standing near.

“ Oh ! it’s absurd,” cried Lady Clevedon impatiently.

Poor child ! ” she added, laughing, “ her misery every
evening when she has to talk to my husband is something
quite pitiful ! You know he is a little stiff and formal, and

174

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

this frightens her beyond description. Ifs the most divert-
ing thing in the world to see him at dinner, with Mrs.
Courtenay sparkling and undulating on one side of him,
and Viola blushing on the other ; Arabella trying with all
her might to be fascinating, Viola trying as hard to sink
into the earth 1 ”

‘‘Poor girl!” exclaimed Harry, laughing. “She didn’t
strike me as so very shy as all that, the other day when
she called.”

“ Oh ! well, you and my husband are not exactly the same
people ; nobody ever is shy with an absurd, lounging, easy-
going creature like you.”

“ Thanks,” said Harry.

“I half-expect Dick Evans and Dorothy this afternoon,
and perhaps Philip Dendraith. Entre nous^ I fancy he
rather admires Viola ; so I thought they might as well have
an opportunity of meeting.”

“ Augusta ! ” cried Adrienne. “ You condescending to
the role of matchmaker.”

“ Nonsense ; I am doing nothing of the kind ; but Viola
really needs to be drawn out of herself, and I think Philip
is a very good person to do it. If he admires her, he will
probably succeed better than most people. Viola is a girl
who couldn’t flirt if she tried, so I am not afraid of starting

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY.

175

any silly affair of that sort. I simply want to give her a
little experience and savoir-faire^ and a polished man of the
world like Philip Dendraith is exactly the instrument for
my purpose ; don’t you think so ? ”

“ I have no doubt you are right,” said Harry slowly ; “ he
is certain to teach her something.^ at any rate, but what that
will be is another matter. Do you think his admiration is
at all serious ? ”

Lady Clevedon shrugged her shoulders. “ How can one
possibly know that about a man like Philip? His heart
must be pretty well seasoned after all his experience, and
he’s not likely to lose it in a hurry to any woman — to Viola
least of all. What do you think of her, by the way ? ”

Harry hesitated.

‘‘Just so,” said Lady Clevedon. “But she will improve.
Her bringing up has been so much against her. Her de-
voted mother has been the ruin of all that family. Poor
Marion ! what a life she has had of it ! More than half her
own fault too. She is really never content unless she is in
trouble. I assure you it’s a fact. Now it’s money-matters,
now it’s household tragedies, now it’s her husband’s health,
now it’s those graceless sons. At present Viola is the
source of woe.”

“What does she do to cause anxiety?”

176

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

‘‘ My dear Harry, she lives ; that is enough for Marion.
Of course the results of the girl’s training are beginning
to show, and her mother is quite surprised ! .Really, the
foolishness of women is something quite amazing 1 Talk
about female suffrage indeed ! I’d rather enfranchise the
madhouses and the asylums ; yes, and the clerical profes-
sion ! ” added Lady Clevedon, with a laugh.

Does Mrs. Sedley regret her daughter’s painful shy-
ness ? ” inquired Adrienne.

“ She sees that she is too ‘ sensitive,’ as she calls it,
and too quiet for a healthy girl of her age. Viola shows a
singular preference for her own society, which / should say
was anything but entertaining. Her mother declares that

she thinks ” Lady Clevedon laughed. “ The motherly

ingenuity of the idea is quite charming ! When I am not
angry with Marion she delights me. Poor woman ! She
came to me almost in tears the other day, because she said
Viola had got it into her head that she wanted to earn her
own living ! It was really too funny ! I sat and laughed
till I could laugh no longer, and poor Marion looked on
without a smile ; and when I had finished she repeated the
thing over^ again, in exactly the same tone of extreme con-
cern ; and if Arabella hadn’t come meandering in at the
moment, I don’t know what would have happened.”

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY.

177

“Why does Viola want to earn her own living?’’ asked
Adrienne.

Lady Clevedon shrugged her shoulders.

“My dear, why. does she blush if you speak to her
suddenly ? Why does she allow her mother to dress her in
pale lavender sprigs on a white ground ? ’’

“She ought to make a stand for brown paper,” said
Harry.

“ Infinitely preferable ! cried his cousin. — “ Well,
Dorothy, so you have managed to come. That’s right.
Who are you going to annihilate this time, with that vin-
dictive-looking racket of yours ? ”

A tennis-set having been arranged between Dorothy and
Harry Lancaster on the one side, Dick Evans and Adrienne
on the other, the players took their places, Dorothy pant-
ing for the fray. Dick was a stoutly-made, reddish-haired
young fellow, with a decided, intelligent manner, and a
pleasant smile. His capacious head, with square, scientific
brow, indicated the direction of his powers. He had that
“ sublimated common-sense,” that power of drawing accurate
deductions from closely observed data, which, when highly
cultivated, marks, according to Professor Huxley, the scien-
tific intellect. His tennis-playing was eminently scientific,
“ screws ” being very plentiful in his “ service,” as was

VOL. I.

M

178

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

evident from Dorothy's frequent use of the language of
imprecation."

During the game Philip Dendraith arrived in tennis-
costume, and joined Lady Clevedon and Mrs. Courtenay in
the shade of a beech-tree, where they were sitting, watching
the battle.

He . was even handsomer than in the old days when
Viola first knew him. His figure had filled out, giving
him a more manly look ; his manner, always polished, was
now as perfect as any manner can be that does not take its
rise in warmth of heart and wealth of sympathy. He was a
man whom Sir Roger de Coverley would have censured very
severely, for preferring the reputation of “wit and sense"
to that of “ honesty and virtue." He would have counted
among those who, according to that moralist, deserve hang-
ing : those men who are continually “ offending’ against
such quick admonitions as their own souls give them, and
blunting the fine edge of their minds, in such a manner
that they are no more shocked at vice and folly than men
of slower capacities."

Philip Dendraith had certainly never been shocked at
vice in his life, and at folly he laughed. He could listen
to a tale of cruelty without the slightest thrill of anger
against the perpetrator of the deed, or of pity for the

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY.

179

suiferer. It never seemed to strike him to imagine himself
in the place of the victim ; he took his stand among the
powerful, and had no fellow-feeling for the weak, whether
weak through circumstance or by nature.

“Allow me to congratulate you on your picturesque
appearance,’^ he said, as he raised his cap to the two ladies ;
“ I feel as if I were about to take an unworthy part in a
‘Watteau.’ The blue-green foliage behind you makes a
most characteristic background.”

“ Oh ! it’s only the background, cried Mrs. Courtenay,
gaily aggrieved; “we were flattering ourselves that 7Cfe
formed the attraction of the picture.”

“Nor were you deceived,” said Philip; “there could be
no doubt of your efficiency, but the background 7night
have failed ; therefore I mentioned it.”

“ Mr. Dendraith always manages to wriggle out of a diffi-
culty somehow,” said Mrs. Courtenay, laughing.

“ He more generally walks out of it, I think, Arabella. —
Well played, Dorothy ! Adrienne, you must bestir your-
self! Did you ever see anything like the energy of that
child ? Her whole soul is in the game 1 ”

Dorothy certainly was worth watching, as she sprang^
now to this side, now to that, her auburn hair flying behind
her, her cheeks flushed, her blue eyes sparkling. Her

i8o THE WING OF AZRAEL.

excited exhortations to her partner, her angry self-reproach
if she missed a ball herself, her despair at Dick’s impossible
“ service,” were all noted with amusement by the onlookers.

‘‘I wish I could see Viola losing herself like that in a
game,” cried Lady Clevedon.

“ I thought your niece was to be here to-day,” said Philip.

“ So she is. I don’t know why she doesn’t come out.”
will go and lead the lamb to the slaughter,” said Mrs.
Courtenay.

“ Only once have I seen Miss Sedley since I have been
at Upton,” Philip observed, when Mrs. Courtenay was
gone. “ I have called three or four times at the Manor-
House, but till Saturday last she never appeared, and when
she did, I could only get a few monosyllables out of her.”

“You must remember that she has scarcely been outside
the gates of her home all her life, poor child ! ”

“She has the makings of a charming woman,” said
Philip ; “ there is a peculiar quality about her, not easy to
describe, but it is very powerful. There is something about
that particular kind of coldness that suggests hidden fire,
and women of that type are always attractive. I want to
, make way in your niece’s good graces. Lady Clevedon.
She quite takes my fancy, upon my word.”

Something in Lady Clevedon’s movement of the eyebrows

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY.

i8i

made Philip hasten to add, Not that there’s anything
astonishing in that ; I have no doubt Miss Sedley is univer-
sally admired.”

The lady’s half-satirical bow was followed by an amused
exclamation ; for, crossing the lawn, came arm-in-arm, as if
on the closest terms of confidence, Mrs. Russell Courtenay
and Viola : Mrs. Courtenay chattering vivaciously into her
companion’s ear, as she leant over her; Viola as straight
as a monument, suffering — all unwillingly — the sprightly
Arabella to wreathe herself about her, after the fashion of
some fantastic climbing plant.

‘‘You have chosen your co-visitors with infinite discre-
tion,” observed Philip, with a thin smile.

“ Yes ; they are a delicious pair ! And, would you believe
it, one is almost as shy as the other. Well, Viola, weazled
out of your hole at last ! You have lost the best half of
the afternoon over your headache.”

“ Have you a headache ? ” asked Philip, in a tone of
concern. “ I think it is very good of you to give us a
glimpse of you at all, in that case.”

He spoke in the low, flattering tones that most women
find so fascinating, and of which no one could fail to feel
the charm. Viola looked up; it sounded so exactly as if
he were sincere.

i82

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

His dark eyes, fixed admiringly upon her, gave no further
clue to his meaning. If ever eyes were given to conceal
the thoughts, Philip Dendraith’s were bestowed on him for.
that purpose. The mystery was piquant.

Oh ! Mr. Lancaster, what are you about ? Dorothy’s
voice rang out in dismay. “ That ball would have been
out a long way if you hadn’t taken it ! ”

I’m awfully sorry,” said Harry. ‘‘ I’m afraid it has lost
us the set.”

And it had. The- players came up from the tennis
ground (Dorothy disconsolate), and joined the “Watteau”
group under the beech-tree.

“ You seemed rather to lose your head at the last,” Philip
said, addressing Harry, with a .rather keen look in those
inscrutable eyes of his.

“ Impossible ! ” returned Harry, flinging himself on a
scarlet rug at Mrs. Courtenay’s feet. “ I haven’t such a
thing to lose.”

“ Our dear Mr. Lancaster, if we are to take his word for
it, has run all to heart,” said Arabella.

“He had better look out and not lose that, into the bargain,”
observed Dick, “ or he’ll have nothing left to guide him.”

“ Except the advice of my friends, and that is always
plentiful,” said Harry.

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY.

183

‘‘A man minus both head and heart is such a rarity that
he might possibly also distinguish himself from the common
herd by consenting to take it,” observed Philip.

Not he,” threw in Harry ; “ it requires the full powers
of both those organs to persuade a man that the rest of the
world are not all bigger fools than himself.”

‘‘A curious use to put head and heart to,” observed
Dick ; — self-dethronement ! ”

“ The. highest human achievement, I assure you,” said
Harry, but whether from conviction or, as Philip said,
“ out of pure cussedness,” no one could determine.

Adrienne looked at him inquiringly in vain.

“ That is the ever-beautiful doctrine of Renunciation in a
new form,” she said, seriously.

‘‘Yes,” Mrs. Courtenay chimed in; “always sacrificing
ourselves for others, don’t you know? — of course, that is so
Christian, isn’t it ? ”

“Well, no, pardon me, I don’t think it is,” said Harry.
“ I wish that people would give up this inveterate habit of
indulging in moral austerities at their neighbours' expense !
If they would only be kind enough to leave themselves and
iheir moralities alone, and to take the trouble to acquaint
themselves with a few of the simplest facts bearing upon
human well-being — were it but the principle of the common

1 84 .

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

pump or of the garden-engine — their friends would have
something to thank them for ! ”

‘‘Oh dear, do you think so?’’ cried Arabella, looking
round in a fascinating manner for encouragement. “ Oh !
but I think we all ought to try and be unselfish, don't you
know?”

“I’m afraid I can’t agree with you,” returned Harry,
with his usual perverse instinct to exaggerate his own dis-
sent. “ I think w^e ought all first to try not to be block-
heads. I know it’s a very hard saying ; far harder than
‘ Renounce ’ or ‘ Surrender ; ’ but it rings truer, and stands
the test of experience better than all the self-effacing
doctrine which condemns the individual (and therefore
the race) to the ridiculous position of the egg-and-bread-
crumbed whiting, whose energies, arguing in a circle, are
employed in industriously devouring his own tail !”

“ Listen to him ! ” cried ‘Arabella.

“ Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian ! ”
murmured Philip, at which there w^as a chuckle from
Harry and a laugh from the others, Viola and Dorothy
excepted.

“Now, Mr. Dendraith;” cried Arabella, “do tell us what
you think about it. I confess I belong to the old school
in this matter, and prefer the humble office of the whiting

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY,

185

(though it may be rather foolish) to the enlightened selfish-
ness that Mr. Lancaster so ably advocates.”

. Philip shrugged his shoulders.

“ I fear I shall shock the company when I say that my
idea of life is, to make myself comfortable, and only in-
jure my neighbours as much as is necessary to serve that
important end. I may add that I differ from most people
in this matter, merely in regard to frankness.’’

‘‘ I call that quite shocking,” cried Mrs. Courtenay ; “ but
it’s very like a man.”

The last clause was added indulgently, as if it cancelled
the first.

“ It is,” said Harry, “ the doctrine that most men
practise. To oppose it we have, unluckily, no well-grown,
robust, unblinking gospel which bids us seek the good, not
so much of an abstract humanity, as of individual men
and women — we have only a sickly morality addressed to
the little personal righteousness,' or desire for righteousness,
of each candidate for heaven ; so that in the midst of a
predatory society, where all must suffer more or less, we
possess little or nothing to work against this dangerous
form of self-seeking but a few of those absurd and heroic
whitings painfully eating their own tails ! As well try to
cure the world’s evils with a set of dancing dervishes ! ”

iS6

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

I say, Dorothy, what do you think of all this heresy ?
asked her brother.

Oh ! Mr. Lancaster is always saying some extraordi-
nary thing that nobody else says. It doesn't matter,” said
Dorothy cheerfully, at which there was a universal shout
of laughter at Harry’s expense.

“I am sure you are quite wrong,” cried Adrienne ; “you
are working against the noblest spirit of the age, and
plucking the highest motive out of the hearts of our most
devoted men and women.”

“I deny it,” said Harry; “I say to them only : Hn the
name of humanity, don’t mistake mere self-mutilation for
the service of man ; don’t devour yourselves from overmuch
righteousness ; the chain is only as strong as its weakest
link. You are a link in the chain of the general life, and
your first business is to see that it is a good one. In the
name of Heaven, not the whiting-trick !’”

Adrienne shook her head.

“A dangerous doctrine,” she said ; “too flattering tq our
innate self-love.”

“ That is a personal view of the matter,” returned Harry,
obstinately, “and shows the flaw in your doctrine. You
care, after all, more for your o\\m virtue than for the good of
others, which claims to be the whole object of renunciation.

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY.

187

This is irrational, self-contradictory. A personal righteous-
ness that does not conduce to your own and others' greatest
welfare is, to my mind, a mere toy, a doll stuffed with saw-
dust which you hug to your mistaken bosom. We shall
have to throw away our dolls, for they are all fetishes ; yes,
even our new, ingenious, flaxen-haired, blue-eyed doll with
the sweet expression, who says, ‘ Papa, mamma, no jam
for me ; jam for Tommy ! ' ”

The idea of this ingenious creature amused Dorothy,
and her comments on the subject shortly reduced the
assembly to a frame of mind entirely unsuited to the dis-
cussion of ethical questions.

Their thoughts returned to tennis, and several sets were
arranged, in one of which Viola was induced to play, with
Philip for her partner.

After it was over he suggested a stroll round the
garden, and Viola, too shy to dissent, made a sign of
acquiescence.

Eyery detail of that miserable interview with her father
returned to her memory as Philip, with flattering defer-
ence, led her round the beautiful old gardens, where the
sun was drawing the rich scent from the roses and filling
the air with a glory that can only be compared to that
happiness which is said to visit none but the loftiest souls,

i88

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

and these only brushes lightly with its wings, as if an angel
were passing on his heavenward way.

“ I ought to smile and flatter and try to charm this
man,’’ the girl was saying bitterly to herself ; “ that is my
business as a woman, — otherwise ”

But Viola did not smile, except undesignedly sometimes
when Philip’s amusing talk entertained her against her
will. She maintained a politely cold demeanour, appear-
ing a little to lose her shyness in the yet stronger feeling
of womanly pride.

The old childish dislike to this man had of course lost
its venom, but the memory of it was not without its
influence on her present feelings, and these were further
complicated by the knowledge of the momentary murderous
impulse which had so nearly caused her enemy’s death.
The desire of atonement was still present.

Philip, who, according to his habit, led the way and
decided details, discovered a pleasant sequestered spot
among the windings of the shrubberies, where there was
a seat, and here he suggested that they should rest and
meditate.

The spot seemed consecrated to the Goddess of In-
dolence, so warm and still and lazy was the air, so sleepy
were the sounds of the humming bees and droning

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY,

189

insects. Viola sat down, while Philip, finding the seat
too cramping, asked permission to lie upon the grass at
her feet.

“ Now this is w^hat I call true philosophy,’’ he said
lazily ; ‘‘ the man that knows not how to be idle knows not
how to live.”

‘‘ Most people know how to be idle, I think,” said Viola.

‘‘ Pardon me, but I believe there are very few. Italians
understand the art, but the Teutonic races are burnt up
with a fire of action that makes our country the most
glorious and the most uncomfortable in Europe.”

“ Only just now Mr. Lancaster was saying that ours is
the only language which has the word comfort in it at all,”
said Viola, falling into the trap that her companion had
set for her.

“Yes; we have comfort in our chairs and tables, per-
haps,” he said, “and that is no small matter; still it is
not everything. We eat well and sleep softly, but how
dearly we pay for these things ! Is there not something
a little incongruous in the idea of a man toiling hard all
his life to enable him at last to buy an easy-chair?”

Viola smiled, and Philip smiled too, but in quite a
different fashion. He saw clearly enough that the girl
had no intention of paying the usual tribute to his good-

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

190

looks and brilliant prospects, but the omission only at-
tracted him. He was tired of girls who could be had
for the asking, and less.

It would be a delightful task to kindle those beautiful
eyes with an unknown emotion, and to make the proud
heart beat more quickly in its owner’s despite. That
would be a victory worth having; an intoxicating tribute
to his power and skill and fascination.

Philip had scarcely believed in the existence of a girl
totally uninfluenced by worldly considerations, but he was
half-disposed to forswear his customary cynicism in Viola’s
favour. He was too keen to be uncompromisingly cynical.
He saw, too, that in order to arouse in her the feelings he
desired to arouse, her ideas must first be led to impersonal
subjects, so that her present hostility might be lulled.

His studies of human nature made him calculate that
hostility was a better ground to work upon than indif-
ference. Hostility implied feeling, and feeling was always
fruitful. Again, women’s hostility was of a passionate, un-
founded order, that might just as reasonably be amity;
therefore it was capable of transformation.

Philip did not think all this out in so many words ; the
ideas floated through his mind, as idly as the flies drifted
through the atmosphere, while all the time he went on

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY,

191

talking, waiting at intervals for Viola’s answers, and treat-
ing them, when they half-unwillingly came, with a deference
that was very flattering, in a man of his experience and
acknowledged power.

Her expression had begun to change already; she was
forgetting herself in what he was saying, and Philip now
found a new and piquant charm in the face ; so much so /
that he began to wonder if he should be able to keep
up the judicial spirit of the experimenter, while he sought
to summon expressions yet more beautiful into the deep
eyes and the proud, sweet lips. The doubt did not at all
detract from the interest of the pastime.

After a time, he ventured to leave the impersonal topics
which had served their purpose so well, and to broach the
subject of the past and its memories.

“ How you used to hate me in those days ! ” he said, with
a sigh. ‘‘ It was really rather strange, I think, for I used to
be quite fond of you, and one imagines that love begets
love, does one not ? ”

“ I have never forgiven myself for what I did,” said
Viola, “and the memory of it haunts me to this day.”

“ My dear Miss Sedley, you distress me ! ” cried Philip,
raising himself on one elbow ; “ I had no idea you took the
matter so seriously.”

192

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

“ I have reason to,” she said, shaking her head.

‘‘But nothing happened,” he argued. “Here I am, all
safe and sound, and uncommonly jolly (especially at this
moment) into the bargain.”

“ No thanks to me,” said Viola.

“Yes; for present mercies, thanks to you particularly,”
he returned.

She looked at him with a puzzled air. Could he really
care, however slightly, for her society, he who had travelled
all over the world and mingled with the brilliant and the
beautiful of all countries ? She gave a faint movement of
the shoulders, as if she abandoned the problem in despair.
But the conversation, the mere presence of an intelligent
human being to one in her monotonous circumstances,
was sufficiently intoxicating, without the aid of flattery.

“ If you still reproach yourself for that old offence,”
Philip continued, “ I think it is high time that it should be
expunged from the list of your sins. I will forgive you —
there’s my hand on it — and now you have no excuse for
thinking of it any more.”

“ Oh ! but you don’t know, you don’t know ! ” cried
Viola, drawing away the hand he had endeavoured to
take. “I can’t let you forgive me in ignorance of my
offence.”

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY.

193

Philip looked astonished.

Do tell me what you mean,” he pleaded ; I thought I
did know your offence, such as it was. I suppose you didn’t
attempt to put prussic acid in my medicine, or resort to
perfume-poisons, after the manner of the Borgias? If
you did, upon my honour, you would be an entrancingly
interesting person !”

‘‘Interesting because I was criminal !” cried Viola.

“ In this age of mediocrity even crime becomes interest-
ing, not because it is crime, but because it is dramatic.
There is a craving for the dramatic in these days, for the
all-sufficient reason that we are doomed to lives of such
monotonous respectability. The Philistines seem deter-
mined to make things so deadly dull that they drive us
into extravagant excesses, for the mere sake of relief. The
poor man takes to drinking because his home is detestable ;
the rich man plunges into dissipation because irritating
social laws make respectability unbearable. I fear I startle
you. Miss Sedley; but if you think over what I have said,
I believe you will come some day to admit that there is
truth in this view.”

He certainly"" had startled her ! — Respectability unbear-
able ! Had she heard aright? The world was seized with
an attack of vertigo ; Good had flung its arm round the

VOL. I.

N

194

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

waist of Evil, and the two were waltzing together as if they
ha’d been partners in the dance from time immemorial.

She scarcely understood what Philip meant by social
laws ; she could not see the town for houses.^’ She had
passed her whole life under the shadow of these laws, and
was unable to conceive a state of things where they were
absent or different. In any case, she felt it her duty to
struggle against the thought that Philip had suggested.

She did not believe that he was a good man, and
therefore it was necessary to be on her guard against his
cleverness.

‘‘But a truce to these heresies,” said Philip, with a
smile, guessing her state of mind ; “ I want to hear your
confession. I assure you of my forgiveness beforehand, if
that is of any value in your eyes. Now tell me ; what was
the secret enormity of which you were guilty at the time
of my accident ? ”

“You talk lightly of the matter, because you don’t believe
I could be guilty of”

She hesitated and coloured painfully.

“ Let me help you,” said Philip, more and more interested.
“ You really did put poison in my medicine ? — is that it ? ”

“ Oh ! no, no, not so deliberate as that,-’ said the girl,
thrusting away the idea as if it were something tangible;

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY,

195

“ but when you were sitting at the edge of that window in
the ruin, you remember, and you made me so angry; —
well, for a moment, as I flung myself upon you, I — I actu-
ally meant to — push you over if I could. It was a moment
of insanity, but a thousand lifetimes could not blot it out ;
it is there now and for all eternity !

Philip looked up at her, deeply pondering.

By some instinct that comes at the right moment to born
rulers of men, he felt that he ought not to make too light
of this matter. Viola’s sense of guilt gave him a valuable
handle by which he could work upon her feelings. He
looked away without speaking, and allowed the silence to
prolong itself painfully.

‘‘You don’t think me ‘interesting’ for committing a
crime when it comes to the point,” said Viola at length,
fixing her eves straight before her.

Philip heaved a long sigh.

“ Believe me, I admire the force of character that
prompts to vigorous actions, but — I confess I am sorry and
surprised to learn this of you.”

Smarting under the implied reproach, Viola was yet al-
most relieved to find that he did not really take a light
view of the matter. Philip’s instinct had been faultless.

• “ At the same time you must not forget that you were

196

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

a mere child at the time, and therefore not responsible.
Such an impulse would be impossible to you now.’^

“ Oh ! yes, yes, I hope so ; but that memory makes me
frightened of myself. I don^t know what may be in me.’^

‘‘It will be interesting to find out,” muttered Philip,
more to himself than to her.

As he spoke the sound of footsteps disturbed the serenity
of the scene, and Philip made an impatient gesture.

“Hang it ! there are the others.”

But it was only Mrs. Russell Courtenay and Harry, who
were taking a stroll round the garden together.

“ Oh ! here you are ! ” cried the lady. “ How comfortable
yon look ! Mr. Dendraith, I do think you are the laziest
person I ever met.”

“Do you not know the wisdom of the Persians, Mrs.
Courtenay, who say that you should never walk if you
can ride, never ride if you can sit, and never sit if you
can lie?”

“ And never live if you can die, they ought to add,” said
Harry, “if they wish to be consistent.”

“ I expect they don't, though,” returned Philip. “ Miss
Sedley and I have been talking over old times,” he went on,
“ and we have come to the conclusion that the past is a
mistake, and that there is no time like the present.”

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY,

197

As this was a sheer invention on the spur of the moment,
Viola looked at him in astonishment.

‘‘ Miss Sedley, you really make a very bad conspirator,’^
he said, laughing. “You don’t enter into the spirit of the
creative genius at all ; you should never stare in a thunder-
struck manner at such a simple d' esprit, I assure you

it is disconcerting in the highest degree.”

“ Don’t spoil that beautiful innocence ! ” cried Mrs. Cour-
tenay. “Mr. Lancaster, I think our motto is ^ excelsior^
is it not? ”

“ That motto is my aversion,” said Philip.

“Well, good-bye, and I do hope you won’t propound
any more heresies to Miss Sedley. I don’t know what
her mamma would say.”

“ Wouldn’t it be pleasant to go for a stroll too ? ” Viola
suggested. “ The great heat is over now.”

“ What, you too tormented with this disease of energy ! ”
cried Philip. “ So be it, then ; let us away. Your will, of
course, is my law.”

CHAPTER XII.

A WORKING HYPOTHESIS.

Philip Dendraith had never been troubled with shyness.
He did not hesitate to present himself every day at Cleve-
don, openly telling his hostess that her house had so many
attractions to offer an idle 'man that she must take the
consequences. He made no secret of his desire for Viola’s
society, singling her out with flattering persistence, and
putting forth all his powers of fascination. She had begun
to exert a very potent spell over him, rather to his own
dismay. As for Viola, her manner was already improving
under the influence of the new experience. The first coat
of paint had been laid on, as her aunt said.

When Harry called one afternoon, he found, to his
annoyance, that Philip was, as usual, among the group
under the beech-tree on the tennis-ground.

He and Viola were standing a Jittle apart, Viola playing
nervously with a bunch of June roses.

Do you remember,” Harry heard him say to her — do

A WORKING HYPOTHESIS/

IC9

you remember, yesterday afternoon, that you dropped a rose

you were wearing, and you walked back along the way ypu

♦

had come in hopes of finding it ? ’’

Viola gave a gesture of assent.

“ I had not the courage then to confess my sin (let us
repeat our stroll of yesterday, by the by), but it lies heavy
on my conscience, and I am come to-day to ask absolution.
Here is the lost treasure."’

Harry saw him bring out of his breast-pocket a withered
rose, just as the two figures turned a corner and disappeared
into the shrubberies.

He would have given worlds to hear what followed.

When they presently returned, the rose was still in
Philip’s hand. What did that mean? Had he obtained
absolution and leave to keep the rose as his own ? or had
she treated the whole incident as too trivial to notice? For
the first supposition Viola seemed too repdlant; for the
second, too shy. As often happens in life, circumstances
must have obliged her to do violence to one side or other
of her nature.

Harry pondered deeply upon the state of affairs : he
half-suspected that Lady Clevedon had been urged by
her brother to bring about a marriage between Viola and
the heir of Upton Court. For Viola it would surely prove

200

* THE WING OF AZRAEL.

most disastrous. She was as a bird in the hands of the
fowler. Philip’s power was of a cold and watchful order,
not to be gainsaid. Perhaps in the long-run her force of
character might be no less than his, but it was of a different
kind. She was open to pain, while he w^as almost insen-
sible. He was a man, she was a woman ; — he a man more
than usually callous, more than usually overbearing ; she a
woman more than usually sensitive, more than usually dis-
posed to prefer the claims of others to her own.

AVould nobody play the part of Perseus to this Andro-
meda? Ah ! how powerless a man is to help a woman,
however much he may wish to do so! — especially if — Harry
pulled himself up abruptly.

‘‘ This comes of idleness,” he said to himself impatiently ;
‘‘ the sooner you return to you duties the better, my friend.
Have you steered your course so far prosperously, with
philosophy for your compass and hope for your pole-star,
only to fall into this pitfall after all ? It won’t do ; it is
folly, accursed folly, and will only lead to heartache. You
can’t do things by halves, so if you are wise you will escape
while there is yet time. But is there yet time ?

“ Don’t ask yourself that question, you fool, or you are
lost!” he exclaimed. “And don’t flatter yoursdf you can
do anything to help her. As for that appealing look that

A WORKING HYPOTHESIS.

201

you see in her eyes, that is simply the effect of your own
imagination, the result of ‘expectant attention,’ as Dick
Evans would say. Philip is too much for her powers
of resistance. Her will flutters helplessly at the call of
his ; she is like a terrified, half-bewitched bird when it
hears the cry of the hawk. It is an iniquitous piece of
work altogether ! ”

The next time that Harry went to Clevedon, Mr. Sedley
was there, making himself agreeable to Arabella, and be-
having altogether in his best and sweetest manner. This
was an evil portent ! He had proposed a walk to the sea,
and Harry was asked to join the expedition.

As Viola and Philip were of the party, he assented, and
he had the pleasure of listening for two long miles to the
not very interesting conversation of Mr. Sedley while the
other couple walked on ahead. Mr. Sedley was inclined
to hang back to examine the crops, about which he had
much to say. These were now in their freshest and
greenest stage, gleaming and glistening under the blandish-
ments of the sun, which seemed to be enticing the young
life to new, and ever-new development, to end, as Harry
moodily thought, in the final massacre of harvest.

The parable was painfully obvious. Seldom had he felt
more sad and depressed than he did to-day amid these

202

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

sunny lands, where peace and plenty beamed, with rosy
midsummer faces, while, the sea sang its eternal slumber-
song a few hundred feet below. In another month or less
these scenes and people would have vanished ; he must
take his part in a new drama, and,, alas ! in that new
drama he felt not the faintest interest !

Life seemed to him a miserable, tantalising, disappoint-
ing failure, full of heartache and tragedy ; the sunniest
temperament in the world could not save one from- the
universal doom !

So little would suffice for happiness : freedom, work,
leisure, music, friendship, and — love. He did not demand
fame or fortune, luxury or power; only those essentially
human requirements without which no life is complete.

In consequence of Mr. Sedley’s delays the other tvro
had now gone a long way ahead, and Harry watched them
nearing the cliff’s edge and the point where the pathway
of descent began. A superstitious feeling possessed him
that if they went down that descent together Viola’s fate
was sealed. It wou^d symbolise the futilre. He tried to
urge his companion forward, but Mr. Sedley was relating
an anecdote, and would not be hurried. He even found
it necessary to pause now and then for greater emphasis.

Muttering ^n unintelligible apology, Harry broke away

A WORKING HYPOTHESIS.

20_3

and set off at a run for the cliff-side. But he was too late.
He saw Philip hold out his hand, and then the two went
down together to the deeps.

Harry felt as if something were tightening about his
heart, as he stood there facing the breezes that came
freshly up from the sea. The sunshine was beating upon
the sweet grass and flowers just as before, and the sea
mufmured mournfully in the bright loneliness of the
scene ; “ the gladness is taken away and the joy out of
the plentiful field.’’ Oh ! the folly and madness- of staking
one’s whole life upon one human being among the mil-
lions, so that the very heavens and earth might be blotted
out, or left dark and ruined in th'eir places !

The folly and the inevitableness of it!

“ I wonder what is the matter with Harry,” Adrienne said
to Dick Evans, whose friendship for her brother made him
a suitable confidant on this topic; “I never saw him so
moody and distracted ; I can’t think what’s come to him.”

“I suppose he hasn’t got a rash anywhere?” inquired
the scientific Dick thoughtfully, but Adrienne laughed at
this supposition.

‘‘ Liver may be out of order,” said Dick. “ Does he
eat well ? ”

204

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

“ Like a cormorant. No, it isn’t his liver. I think (if
he is to be out of sorts, poor boy !) it would be more
convenient if it 7vere — from a housekeeper’s point of
view.”

‘‘ He must be in love,” said Dick, stooping at last from
the pinnacle of science.

‘‘ Nonsense ! ” said Adrienne, startled. “ Oh dear, I
hope not ; it would be such a serious matter with him,
and I don’t see how it could be otherwise than unfortu-
nate. You know he has only a couple of hundreds a year
besides his pay.”

Don’t distress yourself in this anticipatory manner,
Adrienne,” advised Dick ; “ I put forth the suggestion
merely as a working hypothesis.”

That “ working hypothesis ” haunted Adrienne all night.
She longed to speak to her brother, and to comfort him if
she could, for her nature was essentially sympathetic ; but
Harry made some nonsensical reply to every tentative
remark, and she had, as usual, to give in.

Mrs. Dixie, unaccustomed to her son’s new mood,
laughed inappropriately when he was remarking to the
effect that all is vanity ; and when she discovered that
Harry actually meant that all was vanity, she had a
whispered consultation with Adrienne about camomile

A WORKING HYPOTHESIS,

205

pills, and wondered if Harry would be very angry if she
sent for the doctor.

In spite of his wise reflections the young man went next
day to Clevedon. Apparently some arrangement for pro-
longing Viola s visit had been come to, — perhaps on the
occasion of Mr. Sedley’s call — for Harry found, with distress,
that she was not to leave at the end of the week, according
to the first intention. This looked very like a conspiracy
between brother and sister, of which the girl was to be
the victim. Sadly she needed a champion, but who was
to take that difficult post ? Harry did what he could : he
tried to prevent too many ieie-a-tetes with Philip, regardless
of the latter’s frowns ; and he endeavoured to turn Viola’s
attention from her admirer, and to rivet it — if that were
possible — upon himself. There was very little to be done,
and Harry feared -that Lady Clevedon would be annoyed
at his interference, carefully as he tried to veil it.

Philip at this period was in his happiest mood — not
at all a good sign, Harry thought, especially as he seldom
mentioned Viola’s name. He was loud in his praises
of Lady Clevedon, who was one of the most agreeable
women Philip had ever met, and, “ye gods, wasn’t she
sharp ! ”

If Harry seemed moody and out of sorts in the bosom

2o6

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

of his family, he took care not to let that accusation be
made against him at Clevedon. Philip, above all, must
not suspect his secret.

“I will say this for our hostess,^’ said Philip expan-
sively, she knows how to make her house attractive.
And what women she picks up ! Arabella is simply
bewildering ! ”

“ So her host seems to think — a man who would ‘ rather
face a crocodile than meet a ladies’ school.’ I believe,
when all secrets are made known, that that poor fellow will
be found to have undergone excruciating agony on account
of Arabella.”

Hail, Arabella ! ” exclaimed Philip, raising an imaginary
goblet to his lips; tricksey-wicksey Arabella, sweet and
stylish Arabella, who would not love thee, Arabella ? ” .

‘‘ Poor woman ! I am sure she does her little best to
please you, you ungrateful fellow ! ”

“ I am tired of women who try to please me,” said Philip,
stretching himself lazily. “ It is quite extraordinary how
they will run after a man in these days of universal com-
petition ! The marriage-market is overstocked ; a woman
has to get married at all hazards, and she will stick at
nothing in the way of business. A man must be circum-
spect indeed to escape the dangers that beset him in the

A WORKING HYPOTHESIS,

207

highways of society. ‘ He that fleeth from the fear shall
fall into the pit; and he that getteth up out of the pit shall
be taken in the snare.’

“Well done!” exclaimed Harry. “I didn’t know you
could quote Scripture.”

“ My dear fellow, I was brought up on it ; perhaps that
may account for my cynicism regarding the adorable sex.
However, I need no excuse ; if you had run the gauntlet
with as many mothers of daughters as I have, you would
be a blasphemer too. They are simply pirates, neither
more nor less I ”

“It must be hard lines on a girl who doesn’t want to be'
flung at a man’s head, to have a predatory mother.”

“ Show me that girl, and I will wear her in my heart of
hearts 1 ”

“ Well, without aspiring to that honourable post for my
sister, I may point to her, — and then there is Miss Sedley.”

Philip smiled.

“She is inexperienced, and she has been seriously
brought up.”

“ I doubt if all the mothers in Christendom would have
made her into a fisher of men.”

Philip shook his head.

“ Lives there a woman who is not Fortune’s slave ? Upon

2o8

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

my soul, I believe (with the exception of one or two who
don’t know anything about life) that such a being does not
exist ! ”

“She must be a considerable heroine, I admit,” said
Harry, “for Fortune is hard upon women who refuse her
obedience, and, in point of fact, I suppose even a woman
must live. My sister at least goes so far as to hint it.”

“Well, I suppose she must, in spite of Talleyrand,” said
Philip, with a shrug of the shoulders. “ Henry VHL, when
he cleared away the monasteries, might have left the
convents, I think.”

“Do you? Ask my sister and Mrs. Lincoln for their
opinion on that point.”'

“ Oh ! Mrs. Lincoln’s eccentricities put her out of
court,” said Philip.

The appearance of Viola at this juncture interrupted the
colloquy. Philip sprang up and waved her to his place
on the seat, and Harry rose also.

“ Please don’t move ; my mother is here ; she came
about two hours ago; and Aunt Augusta says, will you
come in and see her, Mr. Dendraith ? ”

“ With the greatest pleasure ; but how cruel of her to send
such a messenger,” cried Philip, allowing his meaning to
be guessed by the ingenious. “Lancaster, try and be enter-

A WORKING HYPOTHESIS.

209

taining enough to keep Miss Sedley till I return,” and he
strolled off with his easy, swinging walk across the grass. •

‘‘ Philip has set me a task that I don’t feel at all equal
to,” said Harry, piercing a plantain with his stick.

‘‘ Oh ! please don’t .trouble — I don’t want you to be
entertaining— though you always are so.”

“ A man can take no heavier burden upon himself than
the reputation of a buffoon,” said Harry. “Nevermore —
though the of chief mourner would better become him
— may he lay it down.”

“Are you — a chief mourner.^” asked Viola, her voice
softening at the call for sympathy.

“I am indeed,” said Harry; “and sole mourner too, if
that is not paradoxical.”

There was a pause ; then the very atmosphere around
seemed to throb, as Harry heard his own words escape
him : “My trouble is on your account.”

“ O/i niy account ! ”

Her surprise made him add hastily, “ I ought not to
have said this much, as I can’t say all I should like to say ;
— in fact, I fear I am very impertinent to speak at all ; it
was not premeditated.”

She looked fairly bewildered.

“ I wish you would tell me frankly what you mean,” she

VOL. I.

o

210

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

said ; “ you don’t know of any pending misfortune for me
or mine, do you ? But if you did, you could scarcely take
it so much to heart.”

‘‘There you mistake,” said Harry; “but” — he pressed
his hands to his head — “ I ought really not to have spoken
in this way. Forget and forgive it.”

It was impossible to speak out ! it seemed so underhand,
so mean, especially since he had a new and selfish motive
to prevent the marriage. If Philip had won the girl’s heart,
and was trying to win her hand, what right had any one
to interfere ? It was not as if she were being actually forced
into the marriage. Yet could this inexperienced creature,
brought up to submit her own will in all things, be regarded
as a free agent, when people like Lady Clevedon, Philip
Dendraith, Mr. Sedley, and even Arabella were conspiring
against her?

“ If you can warn me about something, and will not,
Mr. Lancaster, I think you are unkind,” said Viola re-
proachfully.

“Oh ! don’t say that; if you knew how it hurts me to
hear it ! ” he exclaimed. “ What can I do ? ”

He paused in deep and painful thought.

“ This much I think I may say, and I must trust to you
to take it in good part. It is my earnest advice to you to

A WORKING HYPOTHESIS.

2II

leave this place as soon as you can, no matter on what
pretext, and if possible to leave the neighbourhood ; at any
rate, refuse to see, or avoid seeing, all callers. I know it
sounds ridiculously like an advertisement in the Agony
Column, but I can’t help that. If you would only take
what I say on trust, and not demand further explanation,
you would do me a very great favour. My desire to serve
you is most heartfelt, believe me.”

His manner and the thrill in his voice amply confirmed
his words.

Viola’s reply was cut short by the arrival of Philip and
Arabella, and Harry had no means of finding out for the
rest of that day how she had taken his strange advice, or
whether she intended to act on it.

With . increased seriousness Mrs. Dixie, on his return
to the Cottage, began to talk of sending for the doctor,
and Adrienne to ponder over Dick Evans’ “ working
hypothesis.”

CHAPTER XIIL
A CRISIS.

‘‘Well, Marion, what now? Has Richard been forgetting
he is a gentleman again ? Drinking, swearing, or both ? ”,

In his sister Mr. Sedley always found one of his severest
critics.

“I did not come here to complain of my husband,
Augusta.”

“I wish to Heaven you had ! You really ought not to
allow him 'to trample on you as he does. Remember, a
man will always be as much of a fiend as you will let
him.”

Mrs. Sedley was silent.

“ Well, Marion, what is the trouble ? ”

“It is about my poor daughter,” replied Mrs. Sedley;
“her father has been speaking to me very peremptorily on
the subject of her marriage.”

“ He spoke to me about it too,” said Lady Clevedon ;
not peremptorily,” she added, with a laugh.

A CRISIS.

213

“ He has so much respect for your judgment.”

“ He has such a wholesome dread of my agile tongue,”
said Lady Clevedon. “ Well, Marion ? ”

“ Mr. Dendraith has spoken to Richard on the subject,
and asked his consent to an engagement between him and
Viola, but he has not yet spoken definitely to Viola herself”

‘‘I thought it was coming to that,” said Lady Clevedon,
“ and I think it is a matter for rejoicing. The girl could
not make a better marriage, and I need not remind you
of the important bearing that it will have upon the affairs
of the family in general — the boys and so on.”

Mrs. Sedley sighed. “ Yes ; I do not overlook all that ;
but — will it be for Viola’s happiness ? I fear greatly that
Mr. Dendraith is a man of no religious principle.”

Perhaps he may have what is better,” said Lady Cleve-
don, with pagan calmness : “moral principle.”

“ I fear he is not even all one might wish as to that, if
one is to believe rumours.”

“ He has his enemies, and I dare say he is not immacu-
late, but I think he is just the man for Viola ; he is born
to rule and has the devil’s own temper. Women are all
the better for a little frightening.”

It had, however, never occurred to Lady Clevedon to
look out for the terrific creature who could frighten her.

214

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

“ Before Viola came to stay with you/^ continued Mrs.
Sedley, “ she made her father very angry by avoiding Mr.
Dendraith when he called. Richard spoke to me about it,
and insisted on my using my influence to bring her to a
different frame of mind. It was very painful to me, for the
poor child took it so much to heart, and cried out that
even I had forsaken her.'^

‘‘So you told me at the time,'' said Lady Clevedon,
“and very miserable you were about it.”

“ Now, however, by all accounts,” Mrs. Sedley went on,
“she seems to be changing in her feelings towards Mr.
Dendraith. Is that really the case ? ”

“ He has certainly made an impression.”

“Ah! that troubles, me! " cried Mrs. Sedley; “that
troubles me greatly ! ”

“ Oh ! was there ever such a determined miserable ! ”
exclaimed Lady Clevedon. “To-day she comes to me
like Niobe, all tears, because her daughter objects to the
marriage proposed for her by her parents ; to-morrow she
comes to me once more — the identical drops still wet upon
her cheeks, ready to do duty over again ; but this time
because the daughter is favourable to the marriage ! My
dear Marion, what would you have ? ”

“ I would have my child both good and happy, and I am

A CRISIS,

215

sadly afraid that no woman can hope for such a combina-
tion in this world/^

Depends on what you mean by good and what you
mean by happy,” said Lady Clevedon.

“My position,” continued Mrs. Sedley, “is the more
trying because dear Viola would do anything that I asked
her to do. She makes me her guide and her conscience.
How can I persuade her into a marriage which, I fear,
may not be for her happiness? And how, on the other
hand, can I conscientiously urge her to oppose her father’s
will? Can the blessing of Heaven descend upon the re-
bellious child, or upon the mother who encourages her
rebellion ? ”

“ If the woman hasn’t ingeniously got herself impaled
upon another two-legged dilemma ! ” exclaimed Lady Cleve-
don. “ Marion, how do you manage to fall in with these
monstrosities ? You can’t be content with a sound, able-
bodied trouble, like any other Christian ; you must needs
pick up creatures with more heads and limbs than they
ought to have — a sort of Briarean woe dreadful to con-
template. If you had been a general, Marion, the Caudine
Forks is the battle that you would have fought, and
straightway you would have gone and got yourself in-
geniously wedged between the prongs ! ” .

2I6

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

I think life is made up of these many-sided difficulties,”
said Mrs. Sedley sadly. “Augusta,” she went on, laying
her hand on her sister-in-law’s arrri, “you have influence
with Richard ; should the poor child really show a repug-
nance to the marriage, you will not refuse to use it on her
side.”

Lady Clevedon shook her head.

“ I can’t promise anything. The marriage seems to me
so rational that I hope Viola will be wiser than to show
any repugnance to it. I don’t think, mind you, that a girl
should marry a rich man when she dislikes him, but there is
no reason to dislike a man simply because he is rich and
well-born. Many romantic girls make a point of doing that
as in duty bound.”

No help was to be had from her sister-in-law in this
matter, and Mrs. Sedley had then to come to the second
object of her visit, namely, to take Viola back to the
Manor-House. Lady Clevedon scoffed and scorned, and
insisted that her niece must stay,* but Mrs. Sedley was
quietly determined. She did not tell her sister-in-law that
the girl had herself written, earnestly entreating her mother
to recall her.

Strangely still and lifeless seemed the old home when
Viola saw it again after her ten days’ absence. With all its

A CRISIS,

217

familiarity, it was to her as if she had never seen the place
before. And the routine of the days ! without change,
without movement; they were like a stagnant, over-
shadowed pool, where there was never a glimpse of the
blue heaven, never a ripple or a sparkle from dawn to dark.
Viola thought the life of Clevedon empty and flippant, but
at least it had some flash and brilliance.

She felt restless and unhappy. She could not settle to
her old life ; memories of the past ten days haunted her,
and filled her with a vague longing for excitement.

Some new chord in her being had been touched ; she
was angry with herself ; angry with her surroundings ;
ashamed at her own inability to resume her former simple
life. She felt she had lost ground ; new feelings made
havoc with her self-control; she was like a rudderless ship
at the mercy of contrary winds. Gardening was the best
sedative for this restlessness, though that occupation had
the disadvantage of allowing her thoughts to work as well
as her hands.

Contrary to Mr. Sedley’s hopes, Philip Dendraith did
not at once follow up his preliminary overtures. He was
reported to have gone up to town, a proceeding which
caused much suffering to the family of the Lord of the
Manor. Mr. Sedley suspected that Viola had rebuffed

2i8

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

her lover, and she had to listen to some parental plain-
speaking on the subject.

“If it were not for my mother, I would not remain
here another moment ! ” Viola had once cried put pas-
sionately, bringing down upon her head such a torrent
of rage and scorn that she actually left her father fully
meaning to do even as she had said. Such taunts were
more than she could endure. But at the sight of her
mother her resolution broke down ; she could not make
yet sadder that sad, pale face, and bring tears to the eyes
that had shed so many bitter ones already.

On one balmy afternoon Viola betook herself to the
rose-garden, a narrow grass-plot beside the Lovers^ Walk,
the dark foliage of whose yew-trees formed an almost tragic
background to the beds of roses and summer flowers among
which Viola was moving, busy with her scissors and her hoe.

She was dressed in white ; her sunlit figure stood out in
strong contrast to the dark masses behind her. A fanciful
person might have seen symbols in the picture.

A tame jackdaw. Bill Dawkins’ successor but not sup-
planter in her affections, hopped amiably around, amusing
himself with pecking at pieces of stick, hauling weeds out
of Viola’s basket on the sly, and other mischievous actions
which he knew he might venture on with impunity.

A CRISIS.

219

‘‘ Charming cried a voice, breaking the sunny silence.
‘‘ Would that I were an artist !

Viola turned, and the admired picture was by no means
marred by the addition of Philip Dendraith’s handsome
figure as he raised his hat and strode across the grass-plot.

She coloured and smiled in a manner that pleased him
well.

“So it is to you that the Manor-House owes its wonder-
ful roses ! Z'arl d’etre belle ! What better teacher could
they have ? ”

Viola sighed. She wished that she could understand
this man, but not being able to, she resigned herself to
her ignorance.

“ I find they best learn how to be beautiful by being
happy,’* she said, “ so I try to make them so.”

She was going on with her hoeing now in a desultory
way.

“And you make them happy by bestowing on them the
light of your presence,” said Philip in a low voice.

“ And by introducing them to my most agreeable
friends,” added Viola, with a quick glance.

Philip almost started ; the speech was so unlike one
of Viola’s. He had expected blushes and downcast looks,
and he encountered instead something distantly approach-

220

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

ing mockery. It was one of those excursions from her
normal self which had now and then, of late, caused her to
wonder at herself. She had caught unconsciously the trick
of phrase characteristic of Clevedon and its guests; and
this, still echoing in her memory, was given forth, here
and there, almost mechanically, as we hum some haunt-
ing refrain. But the change of tone passed away as
suddenly as it had come, and she blushed at her own
masquerading.

My dear Miss Sedley, I think you have worked long
enough,’’ said Philip, taking the hoe from her with gentle
insistence. ^‘Your roses have had you all to themselves

too long ; it is my turn now to be made happy ”

And beautiful,” added Viola. I make my roses
happy by watering them ”

‘‘ Miss Sedley ! ” exclaimed Philip, looking round at her,
“ I am afraid you have become rather flippant since I
had the pleasure of seeing you.”

“ I fear I have,” said Viola, with a sigh.

‘‘ Don’t sigh ; it is quite charming, I assure you, and
becomes you mightily. Only please don’t be too hard
upon

Without reply she allowed herself to be led to the
rustic seat opposite the sun-dial, whereon the jackdaw

A CRISIS.

221

sat, alternately pruning his feathers and pecking at the
shadow with his beak.

The bird seemed agitated when Philip took his place
beside Viola.

“ Your jackdaw is apparently jealous/^ he said. I sup-
pose you are very fond of him. I should imagine you had
a large power of loving.”

‘‘ And of hating,” added the girl.

“Yes; /can answer for that!” exclaimed Philip, with
a laugh. “ Don^t you think, now, that you owe me
some reparation for having hated me so fiercely in the
past ? ”

She looked troubled.

“ Don’t you think,” Philip went on, drawing nearer to
her, “ that if the possession of your love had become the
supreme desire and object of my life, you ought at least
to try to give it to me ? ”

She breathed quickly, but answered nothing.

“You must know, dear Viola, that such is my supreme
desire ; that you have entered and possessed my heart as
I thought no woman ever could have possessed it ; you
have enslaved my thoughts, my dreams, my very will !
This last week has been a blank to me because you were
absent. I am telling you the absolute truth — I have never

222

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

felt before what I feel now ; I shall never be happy till
you promise to love me and be my wife/’

He was so much in earnest that he had thrown off his
usual calm manner ; his measured periods had given place
to the rough, quick utterance of strong emotion.

There is something peculiarly moving in the emotion of
a person generally very self-possessed, the more so if the
person is of Philip Dendraith’s type.

‘‘Viola, don’t turn away from me; tell me, do you not
love me ? ”

“ Kiaw ! ” said the inconvenient jackdaw, in a loud voice.

This was merely a displeased comment upon the arrival
of Thomas with a watering-pot, Thomas. not being in the
habit of showing that deference towards Jack which Jack
thought was his due.

“ Ill-omened old man ! ” exclaimed Philip ; “ and you,
most obstructive fowl, well is it for you that you enjoy the
protection of a lady’s presence ! Who was it that said that
a woman can forgive anything in her lover, except that
he should appear ridiculous? Have I committed the
unpardonable offence ? ”

“ Oh 1 don’t talk to me like this ! ” cried Viola, with a
desperate gesture. “I am not a clever lady of society who
can understand and answer you.”

A CRISIS,

223

She looked round in search of Thomas, but that discreet
person, having (after a certain lapse of time) seen what
was going on, took up his watering-pot and trudged olf to
‘‘pastures new,’’ with an expression about his left eye ab-
solutely beyond human power to describe.

Geoffrey finding him in this sublimated state of knowing-
ness, and receiving from him sundry oracular hints, was
“prepared for the worst,” as he said, more especially as
he found his father in a seraphic temper pacing the terrace
with Mrs. Sedley, and calling her attention to the exceeding
fineness of the “immemorial elms.” Those elms were in
process of being secured to the family, perhaps for centuries.

“ I fear you think that because I am sometimes flippant
I can never be serious,” said Philip earnestly, “but you
never were more mistaken in your life. I own that I think
very few things of much consequence, but for that very
reason I have the more ardour to throw into those that I
do care about. Ah ! Viola, don't tell me that I have set
my heart on the unattainable ! ”

The conflict that was going on in her mind at this
moment was entirely unsuspected by Philip; he supposed
that her efforts to silence him proceeded from mere girlish
bashfulness, and that he had only to persevere in order to
complete his triumph.

224

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

He leant forward and took her hand.

“Dearest/^ he began — and then stopped abruptly, for
at his touch Viola had drawn her hand away with a sharp
movement anything but suggestive of a coming triumph
for him.

“ I wish you would not speak like this ; you distress
me,” she said, in a strange, bewildered way.

‘‘Viola, I think you are really very unkind,” cried
Philip, “ when you know how devoted I am to you ! ”

“I am very sorry,^^ was all that she would say in reply
to this and to other pleading of the same kind.

Philip was astonished, piqued, but all the more deter-
mined to achieve his object. He knew that practically it
was achieved already, for he had her father on his side, and
through him Mrs. Sedley also ; that was enough ; only he
longed to make the girl come to him willingly and gladly.
As a last resource alone would he employ the parental in-
fluence, but he had no intention of surrendering his pur-
pose, let come what would. Did he not love her as he had
never loved before, and was he not ready to lavish upon
her every indulgence that money and influence could com-
mand ? If an unwilling bride, she should become a loving
and a happy wife, and what more could the heart of woman
desire? Besides, a woman of this type was the slave of

A CRISIS.

225

her conscience. Marriage changed the colour of things to
the feminine mind; what once was black became sud-
denly white, and vice versa. Duty, religion, convenience,
all came trooping to the front after the wedding-ring was
fairly on ; a man ran no risk in marrying a woman of the
dutiful kind, though she had to be dragged to the altar by
wild horses. So spoke unequivocally the voice of experience.

“Viola, am I, then, entirely indifferent to you? Would
you not care if I were to go away and never come and
see you any more ?

Viola’s truthfulness obliged her to confess that she woitld
care, and Philip, pressing his advantage, made her own that
he fascinated her.

“Then why do you repel me as you do? Why will you
not accept my love ? ”

“ Oh ! don’t ask me ; — for pity’s sake, don’t speak of this
any more ! ”

Philip was fairly puzzled, and not a little annoyed. He
was silent for a moment, and then said, with an abrupt
energy, startlingly different from his ordinary manner, “You
are not engaged secretly to some one else ? ”

“ Oh ! no, oh ! no,” she said quickly.

The expression of relief that c'ame into his face was as
striking as the anxiety that preceded it.

VOL. I.

p

226

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

“And your affections are not engaged elsewhere
“No/’

“ Then I shall prevail ! Think of your parents, Viola, if
you will not think of me ; consider how happy you would
make them. I have already spoken to your father, and he
gives his consent freely.”

“ I do not doubt it,” she said, with bitterness.

A smile flitted across Philip’s face.

“ And your good mother ; she too has set her heart upon
our marriage, though she may not tell you so, because she
wishes your own heart to decide the question ! ”

“ My mother exclaimed Viola; “ does she wish it ? ”
“She wishes it, undoubtedly. Why not talk the' matter
over with her? I do not want to hurry you for an answer,
impatient as I am to know my fate. Will you do that ? I
will come to-morrow, not for my answer, unless you like,
but merely to see you again. Do try and think of me as
kindly as you can. Ah ! dearest, it is hard to leave you in
this state of suspense. Au revoir^ and be merciful. My
happiness is in your hands. Good-bye till to-morrow.”

“ Kiaw ! ” said the jackdaw derisively.

CHAPTER XIV.

DECIDED.

Mrs. Sedley was discovered in the cold shadows of the
morning-room which she had chosen for her special domain.
It faced north, was severely furnished, and colour apparently
had not been invented at the time of its upholstering.
She was dressed in black, with dead white folds of muslin
at the throat and wrists. Once she had been persuaded to
order a gown of stone-colour, which she scarcely ever wore,
on the ground that it was too gay for her.

When Viola entered, her mother was sitting working in a
low chair ; a quiet, grave figure, with smooth, shining hair
severely brushed down over the temples, the busy fingers
alone giving sign of animation.

She looked up and greeted her daughter with a sad,
loving smile.

'‘What is it, dearest?’^ she asked, laying her thin hand
on the table.

Viola struggled with her habitual reserve for a moment ;

228

THE WING OF AZRAEL,

then she said, “ Mother, Mr. Dendraith has just left me ;
— and — I want to speak to you.”

Mrs. Sedley dropped her work ; her hands trembled.

Viola had placed herself beside her mother, with her
back to the light. She leant her head on her hand, and
spoke in a quick, low tone.

“Mr. Dendraith wants me to marry him; he says he
will never be happy till I consent. He says that my father
wishes it (which I knew) and that you wish it. Is that the
case ?

Mrs. Sedley took her daughter’s hand in hers, and silently
caressed it for a few seconds. Then she bent her head and
laid the little hand upon her brow,* with a movement more
emotional than Viola had" ever seen in her before.

“ I will tell you all that father and I have been thinking
about the matter, dearest. You know that of late there
have been many business -difficulties, so great that we
shall not be able to live here much longer unless some
relief comes. In proposing for you, Mr. Dendraith made
most generous offers to your father, and as Mr. Dendraith
is a man of good family and fortune, handsome, clever, and
of agreeable manner, your father thinks that you can have
no possible objection to such a marriage. He is naturally
anxious for it, as you may suppose, and he cannot under

DECIDED.

229

stand that you may not care for Mr. Dendraith enough to
marry him. Seeing your father so bent upon it, I entreated
him to let you have ample opportunity to judge for your-
self. I trust your visit to your aunt has given you some
insight into Mr. Dendraith’s character and your own feel-
ings towards him. Your aunt seemed to think that you
were beginning to care for him.'’

Viola looked startled.

Question your own heart searchingly, dear child, and
consider, too, what is your duty in this matter. Pray for
guidance where alone you can obtain it. I have thought
and thought till my head and heart ache, and I have
prayed, and I fear that I can see only one path of duty for
you, my child. Earnestly do I trust that you may be given
strength to tread* it.”

“Then you do desire this marriage ? ” said Viola.

“ I desire only that my child should do what is right and
dutiful, leaving the rest to God. Her father, her brothers,
all are depending on her decision ”

“ And her mother ! ” cried Viola.

“ Oh ! do not think of her., dearest ! She suffers only
through the sufferings of her beloved ones. But your
father’s state of health gives me great anxiety, and if we
should have to leave the Manor-House”

230

THE WING OF AZRAEL.

It might kill him/^ said Viola, “ and you too ! ” — Was it
the cold light of the room that made her look so pale?

‘‘On the other hand,’’ said Mrs. Sedley, “I do not wish
you to enter upon this marriage if it is really repugnant to
your feelings. That I cannot countenance. Consider the
question from every side, and do not forget that this op-
portunity may have been given you for the saving of this
young man’s soul ! ”

“ O mother ! it is no more possible to talk to Mr. Den-
draith about these matters than to Aunt Augusta. And
who am I, of little faith, to move such a man ?”

“We know not what instruments it may please the Lord
to use,” said Mrs. Sedley.

“ Well, Viola, your mother tells me that you have been
speaking to her about Philip Dendraith’s proposal. I hope
you appreciate your wonderful good fortune.”

She was silent.

“ The affair had better be brought to a crisis at once ; I
can’t understand why you did not accept him on the spot
without this silly girlish shilly-shallying. I am going over
now to Upton Court, and will take your answer and settle
the matter out of hand ! ”

A moment of terrible inward conflict ; Viola stood with

DECIDED,

231

bowed head and clasped hands, her mother's words burn-
ing into her brain: ‘^duty, right — the rest to God — your
father and your brothers — to leave the Manor-House —
might kill him,^' — and above all rose the thought of that
mother herself, racked and tortured in the impending mis-
fortune of her family, the real weight of which would fall
upon her shoulders.

Viola raised her head. The garden seemed to spin
round her ; the air became thick and black.

‘Mil tell him you say ‘yes,’ of course," said her father.

Tell him I say ‘yes,’ ’’ repeated Viola.

END OF VOL. I.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON.

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